The Amy Raudenfeld Project
by Iheartkarmy
Summary: Jumping back to S1, Amy and Karma are faking it but Amy's growing tired of pretending. But how can she come out to her best friend without losing her in the process. Starts between the homecoming dance and the threesome and goes off canon.
1. The BOD

Mr. Matthews calls it the 'Box of Doom' (he even writes it on a strip of silver duct tape using big block black-Sharpied letters) and Amy thinks the name's just about right.

It's an old shoebox, Reebok, she guesses from what's still visible of the design on the side. It gets passed around the room for every class project, always with the folded up slips of white paper inside, each with a name or a number or a topic. It's the perfect physical representation of what Mr. Matthews teaches them about the very first day of class: 'the power of random.'

"There are things in your life," he says, "you can't choose or pick or decide on. Sometimes life just hands you shit and all you can do is roll with it."

He's not wrong even if Amy wishes he was. She's known all about things she can't choose since the moment she _did_ choose, when she pressed her lips to Karma's in front of the entire school.

And she's been rolling with it ever since.

She's almost halfway through her sophomore year and two weeks away from Christmas break and all she can think about is that stupid carol her Nana always sang. Except all Amy wants for Christmas is _not_ her two front teeth. It's to get her hands on the Box of Doom before Karma does.

There's twenty-seven slips of paper in the BOD, enough for every person in the class. Each of them has a number on it (printed in that same Black Sharpie), each corresponding to a number up on the board _and_ to an exact match of a note, taped to the bottom of a baby doll. The dolls are lined up, one after another, on the front of Mr. Matthews's desk, with their tiny baby doll asses sticking up in the air.

Amy would laugh if she wasn't so fucking terrified.

Twenty-seven possibilities are listed on that board. There's blended family, nuclear family, single mother, single father, step-mom, step-dad, same sex parents, mixed marriage. Some require partners and Amy knows all too well Karma's hoping for one of those, one that will let her choose who to work with.

She also knows Karma's first choice _isn't_ her and she's oddly fine with that. Amy loves Karma, more than she even realized, but right now? She needs a break. Not a big one, not a lifelong separation. Just… something a little longer than the usual few hours they need for sleep (or that Karma has increasingly needed for _him_ ). Amy doesn't want a break-up, just a break, but she knows she _can't_ say that _to_ Karma. But she knows that until she can get her head straightened out, the last thing she needs is to be pretending she and Karma aren't just lesbians but lesbian moms to a (supposedly) adorable baby doll.

The BOD is circling the room and Amy's trying to track it, to follow the pattern from her seat in the front corner. She knows it's pointless because the BOD, like everything else in this course (the seating chart that changes every third class, the quizzes that arrive on days when there was no reading assigned, the days when an 'F' is an 'A'), is as random as random gets.

Mr. Matthews leaves it to them, letting every student makes the choice, each one deciding who they'll pass the BOD to next. The fucking thing is like some sort of academic STD and, for once, Amy _really_ wants to be infected. She watches as the box makes its way around the room but there's no rhyme, no reason to where it goes.

Lauren passes to Lisbeth because they're sitting next to each other and Lauren, on principle, refuses to engage in such "social experiment bullshit". Lisbeth hands it off to Ronnie North because she thinks he's hot and Ronnie passes it to Shane for the same reason (and how the hell Shane pegged _her_ as a lesbian but has been gaydar blind on Ronnie _since the seventh grade_ Amy will never know). Shane sends it along to Ivy because she's nearby and he doesn't have to move and Ivy sends it to Tommy because he's not paying attention and that pisses her off.

Every pass, every step the BOD takes brings it one person closer, one degree of separation less between it and her. When it reaches Tommy, Amy thinks she's got a shot. After all, he's only a seat over from her and she's the closest person to him who _hasn't_ had the box and let's face it, Tommy's goal is to do the least possible at all times.

Well, _that_ , and to maintain the antiquated, would be normal anywhere but Hester social order that makes a jock like him and a pretty little fuckboy like Liam automatic 'boys'.

"Booker!" Tommy hollers. He stands up and moves to the back, to Liam's seat in the far corner, before taking a knee and holding the BOD out like it's some ancient relic he's returning to his king. "Choose wisely," he says (in the worst fake British accent Amy's ever heard). "Your fate depends on it."

Liam rolls his eyes as he reaches into the box. Amy doesn't even look (she doesn't _have_ to) at Karma who she knows is watching Liam with the kind of rapt attention (and a bit of the drool) Amy reserves for doughnuts. _That_ isn't really new. Karma's been that way since eighth grade, when her junior high crush, Andy Restovich, moved away, and Karma's unattainable crush fixation fell to Liam. Until recently, Amy was fine with that, really, even if she didn't exactly understand it.

"He's a bit of a tool, don't you think?" she asked Karma once.

"If by tool you mean he was sent here by the Gods to repair my broken heart and build me a romance that would put _The Notebook_ to shame, then yes, Amy," she said. "Liam Booker is a tool."

At least she got the last part right.

Amy watches Liam (though not even _half_ as intently as she knows Karma does) pull his slip from the BOD. "Fourteen," he says, holding his paper up. "I got number fourteen."

Mr. Matthews nods. "Ah," he says. "Fourteen." He says it in _that_ way, that oddly teacher way, the way that makes it sound like it's something real, something _significant_ , something that's going to teach you some life lesson you didn't even know you needed to know.

He flips over the doll on his desk, the tiniest one of them. He's got wispy blonde hair and pink flushed cheeks and doesn't look a thing like Liam (or, Amy thinks, like anyone _anywhere_ ) and he makes a soft crying sound as Mr. Matthews hands her to Liam before reading from the back of the card once attached to his baby doll butt.

"Single parent," he says. "Preemie baby. Mother was a drug addict who left the hospital against medical advice. She took a considerable amount of money from you and now you've got no idea where she is and your family refuses to help you in anyway."

Something passes over Liam's face for a moment and Amy sees it but when she (finally) glances over at Karma her best friend is still staring at him with that same love-fool expression she's always got. Whatever it was (and Amy knows it was _something_ ) it's gone as quickly as it appeared and Liam's back to his usual self.

"Sounds great," he says. "And maybe my family won't help, but I'm sure I can find an interested nanny or two, right ladies?"

There's a round of tittering giggles that swirls through the room (though it noticeably stalls by both Amy and Lauren so, apparently, they at least have _that_ in common) and Amy could recognize the soft lilt of Karma's laugh anywhere.

"That's enough, Booker," Mr. Matthews says though his smile says different. "Pass it along now."

It's like slo-mo, like Amy's watching the train bearing down on her but she's stuck to the tracks, her shoelaces or her jeans or _something_ holding there and even though it seems like she's got all the time in the world, she knows she's never going to make it. _That's_ what it's like watching Liam carry the box toward her, carrying _her_ chance.

And when he veers off, cutting back across the room and drops the box in Brandi's lap ( _Brandi_ , who sits next to _Karma_ ), it's like the train speeds up and the light from it blinds her and she never even sees what number Brandi picks. Only where she hands the box. And then Karma's picking and _oh fuck_ Amy _knows_ she's doomed.

It's that little slip of paper, the one Karma holds between two fingers (not that she's looking at it, she's still too busy staring at Liam), that Amy fears and she's sure the silent prayer running through her mind is anything but silent. She's positive that Oliver, on her other side, away from Tommy, can hear 'please not twenty, please not twenty' on an endless loop.

Karma unfurls the paper slowly, so fucking slowly and Amy is tempted to run across the room and snatch it from her, just to end the torment.

"Twenty," she finally says. "I got twenty." She glances up at the list, a huge grin rolling over her face even as Amy feels like she's gonna be sick all over Oliver's new cardigan. "Same sex parents," Karma says but all Amy hears are the oohs and ahhs she's from the peanut gallery and she doesn't have to look to know Liam is grinning from ear to ear and probably in his pants too.

"Do I even need to ask who your partner will be, Miss Ashcroft?" Matthews phrases it like a question he thinks he knows the answer to and Karma shakes her head because she does too and Amy has a moment, just a tiny one, when she thinks she could just say no. Let Karma find another partner. Let her pretend girlfriend pretend with someone else for just a little while (and the _pretending_.. oh it's getting to Amy… the pretending to be pretending and now the project is all pretending and she's almost forgotten what what it is she's pretending and what she's not).

But when Karma says her name Amy nods and smiles and avoids looking at Liam and _really_ avoids looking at Shane and she knows she'll have to dodge him in the halls for the rest of the day.

Doomed. She's fucking doomed.

Karma arrives at Amy's locker precisely four minutes after last bell, as is her recent habit. She's never been _that_ punctual (sometimes Amy even had to hunt her down at her own locker, though nowadays she's more likely to be found in the art room but _that_ 's one of those things Amy's getting used to _not_ thinking about). Amy can't help wondering if Karma's so _on time_ because _her_ locker is _right_ across from the newspaper-slash-tumblr offices and their photographers have a habit of heading out on assignment five minutes after school.

"Ready?" Karma asks

"For what?" Amy asks without looking up from her books. "The long walk home? Binging _House Hunters_?" She drops the last book she'll need in her bag and shuts the locker. "Some cheesy photo op you arranged without asking me?"

"I only did that once," Karma replies, not noticing the 'you just don't get _it_ ' eye roll from Amy.

Amy turns from her locker to find Karma's arm slid through hers as they start off down the hall, It's Karma's 'go to' move and always has been, even before they started faking it. Amy knows it hasn't taken on any extra meaning for Karma, it's more of a means to a continuing the ruse end, and maybe a way to give Liam Booker an extra little thrill.

And if he's so turned on by them together, Amy wonders, why can't he just _leave them that way_?

"Only once or not," Amy says, "it still sucked." Karma tugs her close and presses one quick (chaste, _very_ chaste, as if _that_ matters) kiss to her cheek. She's halfway through apologizing ( _again_ ) before Amy can clear her brain of the fuzzy, spinning 'I wish she would never stop kissing me' feelings Karma's lips always set off.

Did she mention she was doomed? _Doomed_.

"Amy? _Amy!"_

The blonde snaps back to reality and looks at Karma questioningly. "I _said_ ," Karma says (and Amy can tell her BFF is getting increasingly frustrated with having to repeat herself but if _that's_ the case then maybe _she_ should just stop with the _kissing_ and the _touching_ ). "We should probably get working on the baby project," Karma rolls on. "We've only got two weeks and the research alone will probably take a few days, not to mention taking care of Jenny."

"Jenny?"

Karma nods distractedly. She's smiling and waving at people ( _her_ people, her _public_ ) as they make their way down the hall and Amy can't help but feel a bit like a parade float. "I thought we should name her Jenny because it's nice and simple," Karma says. "And I know what it's like to be stuck with some weirdo name that makes everyone laugh."

Amy can see the logic. But… "What did Liam name his?"

Karma 'hmmmm's for just a moment before replying. "Jason."

Jenson. Janny. Amy can hear Karma's ill-advised and ridiculous ship names for the _fake_ babies in her head already.

Though, she has to admit, _any_ of them are better than Kiam.

More things. More things Amy needs to not think about. She sighs and keeps walking which, at points, feels more like _dragging_ , as she has to pull Karma along (can't abandon the adoring public, you know). They're almost away, right at the edge of the school grounds when the car pulls up and this day (the one she thought _couldn't_ get _worse_ ) goes from shitty to some circle of hell she's pretty sure Dante never even imagined.

The window glides down and _his_ head sticks out and Karma's grip tightens on her arm and Amy wants to die.

"Need a lift?" Liam asks and Karma's in the car (front seat, natch) before Amy even has time to wonder if there's _really_ that layer of smarmy in his voice or if she just _wants_ there to be. She hops into the backseat (if the slow and labored and 'You _have_ to be _kidding_ me' way she moves can remotely be considered 'hopping') and shuts the door. Karma's bag and 'Jenny' and 'Jason' are on the seat next to her and Amy wonders what grade Liam might get if 'Jason' flew out of a car window and landed in a ditch somewhere between here and her house. Which is where she assumes they're going until…

"You don't mind, right Amy?"

"Right," she says automatically but then "Wait… what?"

Karma turns in her seat and Amy recognizes _that_ expression. She's even named it since she's seen it so often lately. _That's_ the 'please don't fuck this up for me and I promise I'll love you forever though not in the way you want because I'm not into girls' expression.

Though, to be fair, she's pretty sure Karma doesn't think _most_ of that because that would mean Karma would know how she feels and since Amy isn't sure how she feels half the time, she's _certain_ Karma doesn't know _at all_.

"Liam needs a little help on his project," Karma says. "And he needs an… objective eye… to check out his latest art and I was just saying that we don't really _need_ to get working on ours right away because we've _so_ got the same sex parents thing down. You know, because… lesbians."

She waves her hand between her and Amy, as if it wasn't clear _which_ lesbians she was referring to because, _obviously_ , Liam probably keeps at least one or two of them one hand for any occasion.

And oh, how Amy wishes she didn't _really_ think that.

She leans back against the seat and sighs, knowing that arguing this with Karma is utterly pointless and will just make her already throbbing head hurt more. She watches Liam as he drives along and she can't believe he bought _any_ of that. Either he's got the worst bullshit detector in the world…

Or he _really_ wants Karma.

Things. More things. More things Amy _needs_ to not think about.

Too bad she can't stop.


	2. This New

Karma's with Liam and Amy's ignoring Shane (another chorus of 'this is the perfect chance to tell her how you feel' is the _last_ thing she needs) so there's no one for her to call or talk to and binge watching anything without Karma just feels… _wrong_ …. and she's got plenty enough wrong in her life lately. So, really, there's not much for Amy to do but start working on the project.

Or… she could wax her eyebrows (if that was something she did, _ever_ ). Or she could shave her legs (except she's wearing jeans the rest of the week and who's going to see them, so what's the point?). Or she could wash her car (if she had one), go to the mall (broke and, _again_ , no Karma), find a new documentary to watch on Netflix (because that wouldn't remind her of how alone she is).

So… starting the project it is.

But then she hears a door slam downstairs and it's too early for her mother or Bruce to be home. That means it's Lauren and while talking to her step-sister-to-be is normally near the bottom of her list of things to do (and who is she kidding, it isn't _near_ the bottom, it _is_ the bottom, but Farrah has been pestering them both to… bond) she's running out of other options.

Amy glances over at _Jenny_. Sitting on the bed. Staring at her with those beady, dead, soulless eyes.

She's out the door and down the stairs and into the living room before she can stop herself.

Lauren's in the kitchen, hunting through the fridge, no doubt looking for something semi-healthy (good luck) or looking to once again hide Bruce's various hunks of meat and sorta meat before he, as Lauren keeps warning, "eats himself into a red meat coma." Her baby doll, dark haired and slightly larger than the other dolls, is laying half on and half off the kitchen table.

"Hey," Amy says, hoping to not have a repeat of the time she startled Lauren in the hallway and nearly got a curling iron in the eye.

Lauren's head pop up over the side of the fridge door and that's when Amy notices her wide, almost panicked eyes and the bottle of water in her one hand.

And the bottle of pills in the other.

Amy remembers the rumors, the whispers, the _gossip_ about Lauren and some mystery pills. She didn't give it much thought at the time partly as she was being busy as a (not so) fake lesbian and trying to figure out how to tell if Karma felt the same which meant a lot of time with Shane and that meant not getting in his way even when he did things she found… morally iffy.

The other part of it might ( _not_ might) have been a somewhat healthy fear of Lauren, the same fear that makes Amy think now would be a good time to turn and run and hide and forget she ever saw anything but then _that_ might inspire Lauren to chase her and she might be little but she does have that curling iron.

So Amy does what Amy usually does which is a whole lot of nothing, just a lot of waiting for the other person to do _something_ , so she stays rooted to that spot, eyes flicking back and forth between Lauren's face and the pills (and it's such a _big_ bottle and Lauren's clutching it so desperately), and not saying a word.

"I thought no one was… I didn't know you were… I…. I…" Lauren stammers for a moment before regaining something close to her usual composure and pulling the bottle of pills down and out of sight. Amy can literally _see_ the mask falling back into place as those wide terrified eyes are replaced by Lauren's usual cold glare and perpetual frown. "Did you _want_ something?"

Amy _thinks_ 'yeah, you to tell me what's in the bottle cause maybe then I'll feel slightly better about _me'_ but _says_ "No. Nothing. I just heard you come in and I was upstairs trying not to work on that stupid baby project and so I thought maybe I'd come down and -"

"You could've stopped with 'no'," Lauren snaps. She slams the fridge shut and stalks past Amy, headed for the stairs. "I'll be in my room," she says. "Whenever Karma gets here, I'd appreciate it if you two could keep the fauxbianing to a dull roar."

It takes Amy just long enough to parse out 'fauxbianing' (faux lesbianing and _really_ , lesbian as a _verb_?) for Lauren to make her escape and leave her alone in the kitchen. Amy glances at the clock on the microwave. Five minutes from door slam to… wait for it…

Lauren's door slams upstairs.

Five minutes. That's a record, even for them.

Amy makes her way back upstairs, stopping for just a moment outside Lauren's door. It's still unusual, still _new_ enough that the site of that door being shut still gives her pause. All the years she's lived in this house and that door's never been closed and it's just one more thing, one more pebble of _different_ that's been dropped on her life these last few months.

Different like her room being empty because Karma's not here (which is unusual) or she's not at Karma's (which is _more_ unusual) and _those_ differences Amy thinks she might be able to live with (though not happily). It's the _other_ difference, the other _new_ , the reason Karma isn't _here_ or she's not _there_ that Amy finds herself struggling with. It's not so much that her best friend isn't with _her_ , it's that Karma's with _him_ and that's where she _wants_ to be and it's not the dull ache of friends growing apart that kills Amy (she's always known that would come, eventually).

It's the sharp pain of jealousy that wrecks her. The pangs she feels starting in her gut but not stopping there. It radiates, spiraling out until it hits _everywhere_. The fingers she wants laced with Karma's. The lips that miss her (admittedly fake but that's _so_ not the point) kisses. The cheeks she longs for her best friend to caress, the arms she _needs_ to feel Karma in, the legs that go weak every time her phone buzzes and she thinks it's Karma, the same ones that almost give out every time it's Shane instead.

If this is what _new_ and _different_ is like then Amy's more sure than ever that she prefers _old_ and _same_ and she'd gladly forget these feelings ever existed.

If she could.

But she _can't_ and she knows she can't and right then and right there, Amy needs something ( _anything_ ) that isn't Karma and isn't her feelings and isn't thinking about what Karma and Liam may be doing right at that moment (and _God_ she hopes 'Jason' is watching and creeping them both the fuck out with his dead little eyes) so she does the only thing she can think of.

She turns around, walks across the hall and bangs on Lauren's door. A fight, she figures, is better than silence.

Lauren opens the door, which surprises Amy a bit, just enough that she forgets what she was going to say (not that she really had much of an idea in the first place) and Lauren goes to slam the door shut ( _again_ ). "Wait!" Amy says as she sticks her foot in front of the door. "I mean… I…" Lauren's glaring at her and it's making her nervous and she doesn't know what to do or say or why the hell she did this in the first place.

And she's totally blaming Karma. And Liam. And _whatever_ they're _doing_ (hopefully not very _well_ ) and fuck does she hate feeling like _this_. Weak and alone and drifting and alone and hurting and did she mention alone? And Lauren's still glaring and _she's_ still stammering and nothing's coming out, nothing that would make any sense anyway. Amy pulls her foot back and turns back around, walking into her room and silently shutting the door behind her.

A fight might have been better, but it seems she can't even have that.

Amy slumps against her door, sliding down to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest. It's quiet in her room, so _fucking_ quiet and she finds herself missing Karma's voice (and just when she thought she couldn't get _more_ pathetic). It's not even the words she might say (Amy learned years ago she could tune out half of what Karma says and still get the point) that she misses. It's the sound, that familiar buzz and bubble and bounce that Amy knew she was _used_ to but didn't know she'd _miss_ until it was gone.

She remembers asking Karma once what it was like to be in love. This was back in the Andy Restovich era when Karma doodled his name in her notebooks and practiced all the different ways she could take his name 'upon the occasion of their marriage' (Karma believed in the formality of the language, if nothing else) and scribbled some version of 'Karma loves Andy' on every piece of scrap paper or never-going-to-be-handed-in homework assignment she had.

"What's it like?" Amy asked. "Being in love?"

"It's… wonderful," Karma said. She rolled over onto her back on Amy's bed and stared up at the pale outlines of the stars on the ceiling. "It's like I'm that star," she said, pointing at one (and if there was a reason for her choice, Amy never saw it), "and he's _that_ one and you see how dull we are? How plain and boring and blah"

Amy nodded and then Karma clapped her hands and the lights went out. The stars glowed on the ceiling and they stared at them, heads inches apart.

"But see?" Karma said. "Now we're _electric_ , we're _glowing_ and shining and lighting up the night." She beamed up at the stars. "Being in love is like something inside you burning so bright and so hot that it could light up the sky and it's like the sky must always be dark because everyone can see you shining, _always_."

Amy smiled, as she so often did when Karma rambled on about something with all her energy and passion and even if she made little ( _no_ ) sense, Amy loved it. Maybe it wasn't the glow so bright she could be seen from space kind of love (or maybe it was) but it made her heart hurt in the best kind of way.

She'd waited years since that night to feel that kind of love Karma had talked about. It wasn't an _active_ kind of thing, it wasn't like she fell asleep every night hoping the next day she'd wake up and find him (because she'd just _assumed_ it would be a him because...well… why _wouldn't_ she?) and she always figured it would happen when she least expected it.

Guess she was right about _that_.

But now Amy knew Karma was _wrong_ because yeah, maybe love burned bright and hot. And maybe it _could_ light the sky (if you _let_ it) but the sky clearly wasn't _always_ dark because _everyone_ sure as fuck couldn't see it, not even the ones who _thought_ they did.

Not even the ones who should.

But she'd had the burning part right. It _is_ burning bright and hot and Amy feels like she's going supernova from the inside out. But it's invisible, the light's trapped inside her and there's not even the tiniest crack. There's not so much as a sliver of it escaping and it's killing her and she just can't take it anymore.

She stands before she can think, opens the door before she can pause, crosses the hall before she can stop herself. She's halfway through the third knock when Lauren throws open the door.

"I think I'm gay," Amy says. "Like really. Not faking it gay, like _you_ think I am," and she realizes that she just outed herself _and_ Karma in two totally different ways. "But, really actually _gay_ gay."

Lauren stares at her for a minute, just long enough for Amy to think maybe she's fucked up and just made the worst mistake of her life and to wonder if maybe _that's_ actually a _good_ thing cause maybe anything is better than _this_.

Anything except maybe the silence (and Amy finally gets the whole _deafening_ idea) that lasts right up until Lauren scoots to one side, giving her room to come in and this time, when the door shuts again, Amy's on the other side, hoping that maybe _this_ new will be better than the others.

She doesn't think it could be much worse.


	3. Olive Branches

Amy can't remember the last time she was in this room. She _does_ remember ( _knows_ ) it wasn't this pink then, or this girlie.

 _No_ , _not girlie,_ she thinks as stares at the walls and briefly wonders if maybe this is what it's like to be food when you swallow it, sliding down that river of pinkish insides and she's _so_ not mentioning that to Lauren cause she knows that's an automatic trip back to the other side of the door. And as uncomfortable as she is on _this_ side (this pink and pink - and did she mention _pink_ \- side) it's still better being uncomfortable with someone than without.

Even if that someone is Lauren.

Besides, it's _not_ girlie because 'girlie' is a loaded term. It suggests that Lauren _and_ her room (and it is definitely _her_ room now, more than it was ever anyone else's, more than it was ever Farrah's office or her yoga room or, briefly, the place Hank went to hide) are so very _not_ , things like immature and childish and since she started having 'the feelings' Amy has spent _way_ too much time on tumblr and she knows _that_ is patriarchal thinking and she should be all sorts of offended on behalf of womankind everywhere.

But God, that is just _so much work_. And besides there's nothing immature _or_ childish about Lauren's room even if it _is_ home to the tiniest person Amy's ever known (and she knows, even after only a few months, that Lauren is tiny in stature _only_. There is nothing else _small_ about the girl who will be her sister. Nothing _at all_.)

Now that she thinks about it, Amy thinks that, maybe, it is, in fact, the most _adult_ room she's ever been in, including her mother's (which, she knows, isn't saying _much_ ). Everything has a place and everything is _in_ its place, right down to the books on the shelf over the desk (she's not _checking_ if their alphabetized but _come on_ ) and all of Lauren's photos, neatly framed and aligned in a perfect size-and-shape-emphasizing configuration on the dresser.

It's the one in the front that catches Amy's eye. A blonde woman with the shiniest hair she's ever seen (and if it looks like _that_ in a photo, it must have been Rapunzel singing to save Eugene levels of glow in real life). She's holding a small girl on her lap, one with bright eyes and a huge smile and if it weren't for… you know… the _bright_ eyes and the huge _smile_... Amy would swear it's Lauren.

"That's my mother," Lauren says, sliding across the room and effectively blocking Amy's view of the picture. "I was like four or five in that picture. It was a year before she…" Lauren stops and leans up against the dresser with her arms crossed and Amy immediately knows sharing time is done, at least from _that_ end. "So," Lauren says, "gay?"

Amy nods, both because she's still a bit dumbstruck by the picture (because _smile_ ) and by Lauren's mention of her mother, which is a _first_ , and because she's already said _it_ (gay) once and she's not sure _it_ (gay) will ever leave her mouth again cause saying _it_ (gay) _once_ was about a thousand times fucking harder than she ever imagined it would be.

And she'd thought it would be pretty fucking hard.

She settles down on the edge of Lauren's bed with its light pink sheets and its white duvet sprinkled with tiny pink roses. It's color overload, a bombardment of pastels and pinks and it's entirely different world than the blander, plainer, don't notice me, don't see me, don't find me hiding here in plain sight world Amy usually lives in. In some ways, it's almost too much, like a cliche. It's almost what Amy imagines a _woman's_ room would look like if it were designed by a _man,_ one trying (too fucking hard) to make it match the ones he'd seen on TV or in a magazine or catalog, like he was trying to hit on every feminine trope in the book.

 _Overcompensation_ , she thinks but that's the last thing she's going to _say_ cause, again, other side of the door and as much as it surprises her, with every passing second, she _really_ wants to stay on _this_ side.

"We going to talk about this?" Lauren asks with a tone that says, yes, we _are_. "Or are you just gonna sit there staring?"

"Sorry," Amy says. "It's just… a lot." And they both know she could be talking about the room or about _it_ (gay) but they both also know only _one_ of those is up for discussion right now. "I know you think we're faking it and Kar…" She almost says 'Karma _is_ ' but she's not _confirming_ that for Lauren (even though she sorta already did) who, despite apparently being at least one level more human than Amy would have given her credit for, is still _Lauren_. "But, _I'm_ not," she says. "I'm _really_ not."

Lauren shifts against the dresser, clearly out of her element with someone being _in_ her element, her room, her _space_. Amy worries she's about to throw her out or yell or mock or… well.. any of about a hundred things the Lauren she knew up until about five minutes ago might have already done.

"Why?" Lauren asks and at first Amy thinks she's asking her why she thinks she's… you know… (gay)... but then "Why tell _me_? Isn't this the sort of thing you should talk to Harvey about? Or your mother?" Lauren smirks a little (but it's less than usual and her heart doesn't really seem in it) "Or, I don't know, your _girlfriend_?"

All excellent points, if not excellent choices. "You saw my mother's reaction at the homecoming dance," Amy says. "And Shane is…" She shrugs. "Shane thinks he's the guru of all that is gay. Except…"

"Except he's got no fucking idea what it's like," Lauren says softly but there's still more venom behind _those_ quiet words than there was her smirk a minute ago. "Shane doesn't remember the terror or the confusion because he lives in an all gay, all the time world," she says. "He's forgotten, or maybe he never even knew, what it's like to straddle them...gay and straight _or_ bi and straight _or_ whatever the fuck _you_ are and straight."

Amy nods and if she's shocked by the level of insight and understanding Lauren has… well… it's written all over her face.

"Don't look so surprised," Lauren snaps and Amy tries to school her face back to something normal but this is all so…. _surreal_ and she's sure she's dreaming it all. She _has_ to be. Lauren steps away from the dresser and moves toward her bedside table. "You all think my problem with you is that I don't like lesbians, like I'm some sort of unevolved old school Texas rube."

"I don't think…" Amy cuts herself off as Lauren glares at her and she realizes _that's_ a pointless lie that even she wouldn't buy. "OK," she says. "Thought's crossed my mind."

Lauren stands next to the bed, one hand resting on the night table and for a moment there's this look on her face, like the one Karma gets when she thinks her parents don't think she's as good as Zen or the one Amy imagines falls over her own face when Farrah drones on and on (and _on_ ) about how wonderful Lauren is.

She looks _hurt_. And if the rest of this was surreal, this is fuckging Salvador Dali territory now and Amy has the sudden urge to either flee or wrap Lauren up in a giant hug and never let her go.

She stays perfectly still on the bed.

"Yeah, well, that's _not_ I don't like you or your… friends," Lauren says. "It's got nothing to do with your sexuality. Or Karma's. Or Shane's." She pauses for a moment to think. " _Definitely_ not Shane's." She rolls her eyes. "Being straight would probably take away his only redeeming quality."

Amy's not entirely sure about that but this is the longest she and Lauren have gone without trading insults ( _real_ ones) so she lets it slide.

Lauren opens the drawer on the table and reaches in, her hand coming back out with what looks like the same bottle of pills Amy saw her holding downstairs, except this one doesn't rattle when Lauren holds it and Amy can tell it's empty. She sets them down on the table top and slides the drawer shut. "You still didn't answer the question," she says. "Why _me_? Why not Karma? Even if she is faking, and I _know_ she is, you two are still best friends. Isn't this something you'd go to your best friend with and not your…"

"Frequently angry, often mean, and clearly overcompensating for something step-sister-to-be?"

Lauren's glare is back but there's something else there, something behind it. There's a hint of that smirk and a touch of fire and a bit of… pride, maybe? Admiration? A little 'well it's about fucking time you stepped up your game'?

"Point taken," Lauren says. "Question still stands. Why _not_ me is obvious. But why not _Karma?"_

Amy stares at the floor. She can't quite find the words and she's been _trying_ , she's been trying so very hard because even she wonders why she just doesn't talk to Karma about this. Except she _knows_ why she's not going to Karma with this, why she hasn't even hinted at it (like Karma would pick up on a _hint_ ) but knowing all that and finding a way to say it out loud are two completely different things.

"I can't," she says finally, and it's the simplest and _truest_ explanation she's got. "I can't tell Karma. Because telling Karma I think I'm… that means having to explain how I _know_. And _that_ means having to explain when it started _and_ telling her that it started the moment I kissed her…"

"That would tell her a lot more," Lauren says.

"A lot more that wouldn't be _true_ ," Amy says. "Kissing Karma was… it was like someone turned on the light in the closet and yeah, I know, bad analogy." She laughs softly at her own inadvertent humor. "But… that light was always there," she says, sniffling as tears pool in her eyes but she refuses to let them fall because crying in front of Lauren is one step past what she's ready for.

"Always?" Lauren asks. "Like forever always?"

Amy nods even if she's not sure it's been _forever_ but it's been so long she doesn't remember what it was _before_ so forever will do. "Every time I held her hand," she says. "Every time we hugged. Every fucking morning when I woke up with her cuddled beside me and I never wanted to move again."

Lauren fidgets nervously against the bed, like she can't decide whether to sit or stand or run from the room because this has taken a turn for the serious she didn't expect.

She stands there and waits.

Amy fidgets with her hands in her lap, unable to sit still. "I haven't had a friend, a _real_ one, besides Karma since the fifth grade," she says. "So I thought it was all… normal. I thought everything I felt for her was what everyone else felt for _their_ best friend. What Shane felt for Liam or what you'd feel for…"

She trails off, realizing (for the first time) that she doesn't know _anyone_ she would consider Lauren's _friend_. There's Tommy and her minions (but even Amy knows they don't count) and Amy assumes there were others back in Dallas but Lauren hasn't made a single visit back there since they moved to Austin and it all just falls into silence and empty and Amy feels fucking horrible, like she just slapped the face of the one person who's even _listening_ to her.

The tears come then and Amy can't stop them but she _hates_ them, she hates every fucking one of them. And when Lauren doesn't fill in the blank, when she doesn't offer up a name or a suggestion or even so much as glare at Amy for the _suggestion_ she might not have a friend, that just makes the tears come harder.

"I'm sorry," Amy says, swiping at her tears with her sleeve. "I never thought…."

Lauren settles onto the edge of the bed closest to the table. "Never thought what?"

"I never thought about how hard this must be for _you_ ," Amy says. She doesn't look at Lauren because she's sure that would set off another round of sobs and she's had just about enough of that tonight. "I was so wrapped up in me and my shit, even before..."

"It's fine," Lauren says and Amy, even through the tears, she hears it.

 _It's_ fine. Not _I'm_. It's.

And that makes it pretty fucking clear that it's _anything_ but fine.

"I told _you_ ," Amy says, "because I can't tell _her_ and because if I didn't tell _someone_ I was going to lose my fucking mind." She stands from the bed, the sudden shift almost knocking Lauren off the edge to the floor. "And we're… supposed to be _family_ ," she says. "And maybe we could be, but I've already managed to fuck that up cause I somehow know even less about being a sister than I do about being gay and you already hate me."

Amy takes the two quick steps to Lauren's door and rests her head against the frame. It sits there, in the pit of her stomach, that gnawing regret that she didn't just stay in her room and start the project or watch Netflix or just fucking wallow like a _normal_ teenage girl because now she's made a _bad_ even _worse_ and hurt someone else in the process.

"Amy -" Lauren _starts_ but Amy's not listening and she's out the door and back across the hall and behind the safety of _her_ door before Lauren has a chance to _finish_.

This is why she thought she needed the break, because _she's_ breaking, falling apart from the inside and getting buried under the weight of everything she's trying to fake. She can't even keep track of it all anymore. She's faking being a fake lesbian and faking being in love with the girl she's in love with and faking that she's faking and it's all just pretend and thank God she's at least good enough to fool Karma or else her world might just burn up like one of her best friend's stars.

She stays there, slumped on the floor, her back against the door and her knees pulled to her chest, trying to breathe and then there's a knock, on the door, right above her head and she doesn't even stand, she just leans forward and reaches for the knob, cracking the door to see Lauren on the other side.

She kneels down on the hallway floor, bringing her and Amy to eye level and Amy watches as she rolls the empty pill bottle around in her hand. "You don't suck," Lauren says. "At being a sister, I mean. At least you don't suck any more than I do, so…" Amy doesn't say anything, afraid that even the tiniest of sounds will shatter the moment even though she has no idea what _the fuck_ this moment actually _is_. Lauren sets the bottle down on the floor between them, just inside the door. "I know your secret," she says. "And now you know mine and now both of us will stay quiet and maybe we can… I don't know… work on sucking less."

It's the weirdest olive branch in the history of olive branches and Amy's almost afraid to take it for fear it's some kind of trick, some sort of plan, Lauren just pretending to be nice, pretending to be her friend (or a maybe friend) and then she thinks about how much pretending… so _fucking_ much… and wouldn't it be nice, maybe, to have one person in her life (her _family_ ) she didn't have to do that with.

And that olive branch, as weird as it is and as much as she doesn't trust it (yet) is just too tempting to resist.

Lauren stands and moves away as Amy plucks the bottle from the floor, reading the label with confusion and a whole new set of questions she knows she'll be Googling all night and Lauren pauses in her own doorway. They both hear the front door open and the sound of Bruce and Farrah's voices downstairs.

"Emmy," Lauren almost whispers and Amy looks up, even _more_ confused. "My best friend, my Karma. Her name was Emmy and when I…" She looks down at the bottle in Amy's hand and that branch takes on all new meaning. "She's in Dallas and I'm _here_ ," Lauren says, as if that explains everything and maybe it kinda does. "I'm going out tonight with Tommy, so you're on your own but… if you wanted a ride to school in the morning, you know, if you wanted to… talk… some more…."

Amy nods and then Lauren's gone, back behind her own door and Farrah's calling for Amy from downstairs and Amy's yelling back that she'll be right there. Right after she tucks the empty bottle away in the back of her sock drawer and makes a mental note to tell Shane to back off of Lauren tomorrow.

He'll want to know why and Amy knows she doesn't have a good excuse to give him because even if her all night Googling tells her the truth….

She'll just have to pretend.

At least she's good at that.


	4. Tears

**Someone asked what endgame for this was. There isn't one. It was supposed to be a story about Amy coming out but it's sorta morphed into a new version of S1 and I don't know where it's going other than Amy eventually coming out to Karma.**

Karma does finally show up, right around nine-thirty, walking through Amy's door and it's not so much a walk as it is a _float_ and then she's dropping onto Amy's bed with a heavy sigh.

Amy's gotten used to _that_ sigh the last few weeks, ever since 'Guess who's having a super sexy secret affair?' and she's even named it. It's Karma's 'I just did something I _know_ you don't want to hear about but I'm making such a dramatic entrance that you _have_ to ask and then I can tell you _all_ about it without feeling guilty' sigh.

In simpler terms? It's her 'Liam Fucking Booker' sigh (though Amy tries _really_ hard not to think about _anyone_ , especially not _Karma,_ fucking Booker.)

"So," Amy says, "I started doing some research." And that _is_ true, though she makes a point of leaving out that _most_ of that research was about Lauren's pills and her 'condition' (a term that Amy refuses to use because it makes it sound _wrong_ and it's so _not_.) And yes, she's totally ignoring the 'sigh of many names' (and _yes_ , she wishes, _prays_ even, that she could ignore the _cause_ of said sigh so easily.) "We need to set up a budget for household expenses and day care and what not," she says. "So I started there."

Karma sits up on the bed, cocking her head to one side and Amy knows just from _that_ look that her ignoring has _not_ been ignored. As used to some things as Amy has gotten (both willingly and with less… enthusiasm… in some cases) Karma is that _un-used_ to being ignored.

"Right," Karma says, stretching the word out and there's that _sigh_ again. "Sorry I was gone _so long,_ " she says. "I didn't plan on… _it_ … taking as long as… _it_ … did."

It.

 _It_.

Fucking _it_ and Amy wonders if she just keeps staring at the screen of her laptop, if she doesn't acknowledge _it_ or pay _it_ any mind or if she acts like _it_ just doesn't even exist (and _not_ like she's planning various and sundry and particularly gruesome ways for _it_ to… _disappear_ ) if maybe it will just go away on its own. If _it_ will cease to be a problem. If _it_ will stop being a code word for 'him'... unless… maybe it _isn't_ … maybe it's code for… _it_ … and they did _it_ and now Amy's got one more thing to add to her list of things not to think about.

"Did you know some companies are offering leave for both partners now?" she asks Karma, blatantly and obviously (even to _Karma_ ) ignoring the hook and the bait that the redhead's dangling. "We should use one of those for our project. They're very progressive."

"Sounds good," Karma says. Or, at least, that's what her _words_ say, but her _tone_ (and the look on her face, the same one she often sports in chemistry (and math) (and history) (and anything else with the word _class_ after it, particularly the ones with _him_ , when she's too distracted to pay even her usual little attention ) says something else. Something more along the lines of _WTF, Amy?_ because they both have their roles in this little play and right now it seems like _someone_ is forgetting her lines.

Except Amy's not _forgetting_ , she's _choosing_ , and as upset as it seems likely to make Karma, there's a certain sense of… pride?... in that.

"I really didn't mean to leave you with all the work," Karma says. "It was just that Liam really needed -"

And those two words (Liam _and_ needed) are about two words too far for Amy, especially tonight, after Lauren and 'I think I'm gay' and the pills and the _not_ conditions and the last thing that _Amy_ needs is to have to pretend for one single second that she gives even one tiny fuck about Liam Fucking Booker's needs. She slaps her hands down on either side of her laptop and the noise startles them both and it's the first moment when Karma suspects that Amy might not be _forgetting_ at all.

"Amy?"

There's about a thousand ways Amy could and, maybe, _should_ answer that question that isn't even really a question. Ways like 'Karma, I want to hear about what Liam needs about as much as I'd like to squeeze a baby the size of Jenny out of my vagina.' Or, maybe, 'I'd like to hear about how you _helped_ Liam with his needs about as much as I'd like to take Oliver and his tiny little cranes to prom' _or_ 'I want to hear about what you and Liam did for _five fucking hours_ as much as I'd like to confess the truth to you right here and now because, truthfully, they'd probably hurt about the same.'

She considers them _all_ , for about a second each and then goes with "I'm gonna go get a drink. You want anything?"

"Um… yeah?" Karma says / asks and she's clearly thrown by the hand slapping into getting a drink pirouette Amy's just pulled but she has less than no clue what it means. "A water," she says. "Thanks."

Amy nods and pushes back from her desk, her palms still stinging as she leaves the room, quietly clicking the door shut behind her. She's so very proud that she makes it all the way to the kitchen before the tears start (and so very _grateful_ no one is there to see them) and if it takes her a few extra minutes to come back with two glasses of water?

Karma's too busy texting on her phone with _that_ smile on her face (the one that goes with the sigh) to even notice and Amy's not surprised in the least.

* * *

Karma and Amy don't find any more time to work on the project that week and that has _nothing_ to do with Amy finding one excuse after another to put it off, both because she can't handle another night like the last one _and_ because she and Lauren spend most every evening talking.

And _that's_ both the oddest and most sort of awesome thing _ever_.

It's not like every conversation Amy has with Lauren is deep and meaningful and full of revelations. In fact, after 'I think I'm gay' and 'I _know_ I'm Intersex' (which Lauren's never said but Amy did her research and she's not a straight A student for nothing) the BIG revelations have come not in giant confessions, but in the quieter moments, just tumbling out with the rest of the conversation and sometimes it feels like they're just one upping each other in the horrors of teenage girls.

"My parents are divorced," Amy says (and not without noticing that Lauren doesn't even so much as roll her eyes at the 'duh-ness' of _that_.) "My dad was never home and my mom was a bit of a… well… "

"A ho," Lauren suggests and Amy considers being offended on Farrah's behalf but it's not _entirely_ untrue so she lets it slide. "My mom died when I was six," Lauren says, "right after we found out… and then my daddy spent the next few years trying to figure out what the hell Intersex meant _and_ drowning his sorrows in women so he was, basically, a -"

"Ho?" Amy supplies and Lauren nods and they've got _that_ in common so there's that.

Amy tells Lauren about discovering her peanut allergy by nearly dying and Lauren tells her about listening to her father ask doctors if she'd grow a penis. Amy recalls rubbing Farrah's back and saying 'there, there' after husband number three left and Lauren tells the tale of finding wife number two fucking her father's assistant during their annual Christmas party.

"My boyfriend," Lauren says, "is a neanderthal who, if I ever told him what I am, would probably assume I'm a dude."

"My girlfriend," Amy says, "is, right this very minute, making out with Liam Booker."

"You win," Lauren says even though, really, neither of them considers that any of it even _close_ to a win. But there is something to be said for losing with _company_ and Amy has to admit that she actually _likes_ Lauren's company, more than she would have imagined.

Lauren's not Karma (no one would be) and there's not that sense of knowing the other person, of being so close you don't have to speak or wonder or decode. But there's something… _nice_ … about discovering someone too, something Amy hasn't felt in a very long time. She's known Karma too long and too well and she just doesn't make friends easily, though lately that seems to be anything but true. Because now there's Lauren…

And now there's _Shane…_

Amy manages to avoid him most of the week, starting by ducking out of Mr. Matthews' class the day of the BOD. It's not easy to hide from him, Amy discovers. Shane, it seems, is _everywhere_. He's in line in the cafeteria, he's standing outside the door of every class they share (she's late at least a half dozen times that week and she's lucky not to get detention because then she'd be trapped), he's waiting by the bus and if she wasn't getting rides from Lauren, Amy knows she'd have to decide between facing him and walking home.

Walking seems far more appealing.

It isn't that she doesn't like Shane, she really does. Amy's got a real sense that underneath it all, Shane's not actually half as much of a jackass he sometimes seems. In an odd ( _very_ odd and kind of annoying and exasperating) way she even understands what he was trying to do when he outed her and Karma. Shane doesn't believe anyone should ever have to hide, even if hiding is the preferred orientation.

"Never be ashamed," he told her before Homecoming. "Never be ashamed of who you are _or_ who you love."

Amy's not ashamed, not in the least. But the problem is that she understands what Shane doesn't.

There are a lot of reasons ( _a lot_ ) to hide who you are (and _who you love_ ) besides shame.

She thought, briefly ( _very_ briefly, like the thought popped into her brain, waved, and then popped right back out) of telling Shane the truth, that they were faking it, or at least Karma is and that now she's not so sure. It had been Shane she'd imagined turning to, not Lauren (for so _many_ reasons that seemed _so_ obvious at the time, the pre olive branch time) and she's pretty sure he'd have been… OK… with it all. At least at first.

But then Shane caught wind of the super sexy secret affair (and Amy's not _sure_ , but she's got a pretty good idea that the wind got caught by Liam _saying_ something or Shane _seeing_ something or maybe just by Karma _doing_ something and that something being mooning over Liam like he's her sun and stars) and since then, Shane's been giving her pitying stares and shooting Karma dirty looks and dropping not so subtle (Shane doesn't know the word 'subtle' _exists_ ) hints that he knows what's going on and he's not happy about it. He blames Karma (because it _couldn't_ be Liam because Liam would _never_ ) and Amy thought it probably wise to not give him any more reasons to not like her best friend.

So she avoids him ( _and_ his hints _and_ his lectures couched in stories of 'friends' _and_ his disapproving eyes every time Karma's within five feet) for most of the week but he finally corners her on Friday, by her locker, while she's distracted by the sight of Liam and Karma across the hall, standing just a little _too_ close (they're sharing _air_ ) and Amy wonders how it is that Karma thinks no one notices.

Unless they're living in a world full of Karma's, _someone_ is noticing.

Someone _besides_ her.

Shane leans on the locker next to hers and tracks the path of her eyes, spotting his best friend and hers and the hearteyes shooting back and forth and the way Karma is leaning toward him and the way he has to keep moving his hand away because he's so close to grabbing her ass right there in the hall. Shane's not sure what Amy feels about it all (because she won't tell him and that's starting to piss him off) but he is sure that the whole thing bugs _him_ on a level he's not used to. He's even starting to get mad at Liam and he's done _that_ before but never in a way that makes him want to go and punch his best friend right in his pretty face.

Amy stares and says nothing and Shane leans and says nothing and that's just a whole lot more nothing than he can take. "Staring at them isn't going to make Liam burst into flames," he says. "No matter how hard you try."

It's a slow process, but Amy pulls her eyes away and turns her attention back to her locker and her books and tries really hard to not visualize Liam spontaneously combusting in the hall while Karam tries desperately to douse his flames with her tears.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says, shuffling books and refusing to look at Shane for even a second. "Liam who? We know a Liam?"

She can feel Shane staring at her and she knows the snippy comeback (probably something about denial and Egypt or her head and sand) is locked and loaded but she keeps her face neutral and her eyes on her books, even if right then she doesn't know the difference between her chem book and her copy of _Pride and Pejudice_.

"Yes, we do," Shane says. "Liam 'trying to make a move on _your_ girlfriend cause every straight guy wants to nail a lesbian and she sorta seems into it' Booker." He glances at their mutual besties again and frowns, the urge to smack _one of them_ (he's not even sure which at this point) bubbling just below the surface. "I take _that_ back," he says. "Karma doesn't seem just _sorta_ into it. The eye fucking over there is reaching Internet porn levels and not like old school took and hour to download one picture porn either and… _hey_ … where are you _going_?"

Amy's shut her locker and made it halfway down the hall before Shane catches up to her and she silently resolves to work on her speed in gym class (which is a _total_ lie.) "I forgot a… book… in a… class," she says and she doesn't slow down or even bother looking at him to see if bought it because even Karma wouldn't have bought _that_.

"Hey," Shane says, catching hold of her arm, which finally stops her. "What's going on with you?"

Amy shakes her head and tugs her arm free. "Nothing. I'm fine," she says ( _lies_ ). "Why would you think something's going on?"

Shane folds his arms across his chest and stares at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable (so, all of about five _seconds_ ). "Let's see," he says, "you texted me and asked me to back off Lauren with no reason, you haven't returned a call or text since, I'm pretty sure you've been avoiding me like I avoid hetero love scenes in movies, and now you're running away from me."

"I wasn't _running_ ," Amy says because that distinction _helps_.

Shane ignores her (cause he's never done _that_ before) and goes right on. "If I didn't know better," he says, "I'd be taking this all kinda personally."

" _Do_ you?" Amy snaps without thinking and without anything approaching Lauren-level bite to it and she's so gonna need some tutoring for _that_. "Do you _know better_?" she asks. "Cause maybe I _am_ trying to avoid you and really, could you blame me?"

Shane takes a small step back, his eyes darting from side to side but no one seems to be paying any attention though if Amy's voice keeps getting louder, he doubts that'll last.

Amy takes a page out of Shane's book and doesn't stop even though she knows she should, she knows she hasn't gone too far. _Yet_. "I mean, let's _see_ ," she says. "You _did_ out me to the whole school and you _did_ orchestrate that whole insane homecoming thing and now _your_ best friend is… eye fucking… _my_ girlfriend." She adjust the strap of her bag on her shoulder and stares Shane dead in the eyes. "Maybe, after all _that_ , I've just decided that you're more trouble than you're worth."

She doesn't mean it and she knows she doesn't and she's pretty sure Shane does too but right now, between the week she's had and the eye fucking and the fact that she's yelling in a school hall and Karma's not coming running…

She may not mean it but she just doesn't care. She _can't_. So she turns on her heel and starts off down the hall before Shane can say anything and she makes it all the way to the school doors and halfway to Lauren's car in the lot before the tears come and she can't stop them.

That's been happening a lot lately and it's really, _really_ starting to get on her nerves.

A dozen people pass her, a dozen people who spend half their days staring at her and Karma and hooting and hollering and whooping it up whenever the kiss or cuddle or hold hands. A dozen people who voted them homecoming royalty and patted themselves on the back and celebrated how accepting and open-minded and awesome they all are.

A dozen people who pay no mind whatsoever to the crying blonde in the parking lot because one crying girl just doesn't matter. Not when there's another protest to plan or party to prep or a juicy bit of gossip about who's eye fucking who to pass along. One crying girl doesn't matter.

Except _this_ crying girl used to. She used to matter _very_ _much_ , at least to the only person who mattered to _her_. Except _that_ person isn't there and this crying girl doesn't know where she is and, honestly, she doesn't think she _wants_ to.

And when Lauren finds this crying girl and takes her by the hand and leads her to the car and then to home and then to her room, where she stays the rest of the night, _alone_ , her phone and her texts silent and her Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat all dead to the world, and there's not even noises in the hall, not a voice, not a knock, and sure as _hell_ not a person ( _that_ person) curling up around her and holding her till the tears are done?

This girl… _Amy_ … she starts to wonder.

Wonder if maybe she just doesn't matter at all.


	5. Tired

She tries to go to bed early, thinking the silence will disappear in her sleep, but it doesn't and she can't and so Amy spends half the night awake, alone (a state she's both used to and coming to loathe) and consciously choosing to _not_ do anything _stupid_.

If you count calling Karma and confessing everything in a fit of hiccuping sobs and gasps and 'I'm totally in love with you and watching you with _him_ is slowly _killing_ me' as something stupid.

And Amy does. She _so_ does.

So it's away with the phone and on to other… _things_. Something, anything.

At one thirty in the morning, she cleans her desk. It's her usual state of neat bordering on tidy bordering on almost as anal as Lauren so it doesn't take long and it takes even less time when she finds an old picture of her and Karma (circa Karma's fourteenth birthday) that's fallen from her little cork board and sees her own eyes in the shot and the way they're ( _she's_ ) staring at Karma and Amy wonders how _no one_ ever picked up on it before Shane.

She shoves the picture in a drawer behind an unopened pack of highlighters and under a stack of index cards, like that will help her forget it.

At one-forty-five, she rearranges the post it notes on her mannequin, moving any of the ones Karma wrote ('you're the _best!_ ' and 'Karmy forever!' and 'I love you') (she almost burns the last one) (then she almost falls asleep with it crumpled in her hand and tears streaming down her cheeks) to the back.

Between the moving and the almost falling asleep, that takes a little longer.

At two-twenty-three she logs onto Instagram, immediately going to Karma's account (mistake #1.) There's nothing new, picture wise, but it takes her all of three minutes (so two-twenty-five) to notice that there is something new in the comments. A new like. On practically every pic, even the ones of Karma and the Good Karma truck and her smiling parents and her blushing embarrassed (but still posted the pics to make Molly and Lucas happy) cheeks.

 _LiamBooks69_ So cool

 _LiamBooks69_ HarveyHester Dude, we need to try their smoothies

 _LiamBooks69_ Lookin' good K!

Amy can practically hear _him_ laughing and thinking how original he is with the whole '69' at the end of his name cause _no one_ has ever done _that_ before and she scrolls through another two sets of Karma's pictures and there's not a one he hasn't liked or commented on or tagged Shane in and he's fucking stalking her and Amy's quite sure Karma finds that much less _creepy_ than she should.

At two-thirty she takes a ten minute crying break and at two-forty-one she logs back on and unfollows Karma on Insta and wonders how long it will take her to notice.

Probably longer than the ten minutes it lasts since Amy logs back on at two-fifty-two and refollows and she knows _that_ will get Karma's attention and she'll totally ask about it and Amy will just blame it on some technical glitch ('you know how I am with social media') and Karma will laugh and that will be that and Amy's three am secrets will be safe.

(Except Karma never asks and Amy never lies and no, that doesn't make her feel like she's been punched in the stomach _at all_.)

At three-oh-five she tries working on the project again, getting as far as Googling 'same sex custody suits' (nothing subconscious going on _there_ ) but by three-oh-eight she's given up and crawled into bed and resigned herself to listening to the silence and staring at her ceiling for the next four hours till someone else in the house wakes up and then hiding in her bed because she loathes alone, but she's pretty sure she hates talking (because, with everyone but Lauren, talking is faking and faking is lying and lying is exhausting and she's done so much of it she should be wiped out and not staring at the fucking stars…)

She's asleep by three-fifteen.

* * *

The doorbell wakes her but it's _Saturday_ and it's not even _nine_ and Amy has no desire to see _anyone_. She tugs her duvet up over her head and rolls onto her side, squeezing her eyes shut under the covers.

The bell rings again and she ignores it, again and hopes that whoever it is gets bored or annoyed or Lauren answers the door and bites their head off (unless it's Karma) (or maybe _especially_ if it's Karma) (she's not quite sure) and she burrows further under the blankets.

It rings a third time and Amy waits and listens for Lauren. She knows Farrah and Bruce are off playing golf, which is really _Bruce_ playing and Farrah _pretending_ (runs in the family) that she doesn't know how and letting him 'show' her and giggling a lot and (probably) making sure she wiggles against him a little bit when he stands behind her to help with her stance.

It's all very old fashioned and patriarchal and Farrah is playing into soooo many stereotypes and totally setting feminism back like fifty years (and Amy _so_ needs to spend less time on Tumblr) and, more than anything, it's _really_ nauseating and she pulls her pillow over her head and tries to think of _anything_ else (or, _almost_ anything else cause she already spent all of her sleep dreaming about Karma and _LiamBooks69_ and her blow up with Shane and replaying Lauren helping her to the car and so, maybe, thinking of her mom and Bruce isn't the _worst_ option) and then the fucking bell rings again and for _fuck's sake_ , can't anyone take a _fucking hint_?

She finally hears Lauren pad past her room and then down the stairs and the muffled sound of voices and then more footsteps _up_ the stairs and then through her door (and why didn't she _lock_ that?) and then Shane's there and on her bed and crawling under her covers and his arm is snaking around her waist.

And no, no one can take a hint. Especially not Shane.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles against the back of her neck and Amy says nothing but her eyes are open and she turns her head (pushing the pillow off) just enough to see that Lauren's there too, leaning against the dresser with an unreadable look on her face and it's just too fucking _early_ for this.

Amy fidgets, loosening Shane's grip just enough so that she can roll and she turns to face him, keeping her expression neutral and not letting on even a little that she's sort of, kind of, maybe just _a little_ glad to see him (as long as they don't have to talk; she's too tired to lie) and she waits.

Shane's obviously a little taken aback at her _not_ instantaneous forgiveness. "I said I was _sorry_ ," he repeats. "I am. Sorry. You know… for… everything?"

It's the question of it that draws and 'ugh' and a huff from Lauren over by the dresser and Amy arches a brow and Shane frowns and lets his eyes drop to the bed.

"Alright, alright," he mutters. "I'm sorry I outed you to everyone."

"And?"

They both turn and look at Lauren who glares at Shane expectantly and Amy suddenly has a very good idea what those muffled voices downstairs were all about.

"And I'm sorry I haven't listened to you," Shane says. "Like _at all_ , about _anything_."

It's just about enough for Amy who's really not in an apologizing or forgiving or a much of anything mood and all Shane's really doing is reminding her of everything she's trying to forget even if she can't even do that in her _sleep_.

"And?"

It's just about enough for Amy but _not_ , apparently, for Lauren.

"And I'm sorry I wasn't there for you yesterday, even if you did rip me a new one in front of everyone," he says. "And I'm sorry I basically forced you into Homecoming and getting outed in front of your mother."

Oh. Yeah. _That_.

At least she hadn't thought of that in the last few minutes.

"And I'm sorry I tried to spread rumors about Lauren," he glares at her from the bed and Amy hopes that's it but of _course_ it isn't and Shane goes right on apologizing for everything from not sitting with her at lunch to not helping her with her wardrobe ('there's a difference between 'I'm the butch' and 'I'm the butch cause I don't care' and we need to get you on the _right_ side of _that_ ') and she's pretty sure he's tossed in the Kennedy assassination, World War I, the cancellation of _My So-Called Life_ (which she's bemoaned since she discovered Netflix), and just when she thinks he's finished?

He pushes.

"And," he says, "I'm sorry that I'm making such a big deal out of this whole Liam and Karma _whatever_ because _clearly_ it's just some harmless flirtation since, you know, she's _gay_ and all and -"

"Karma's faking."

Amy's not sure whose gasp is bigger - Lauren's or Shane's - though she knows they're for entirely different reasons and she's not even sure why she said it except that she kinda is cause as much relief as telling Lauren about _her_ brought her, keeping it in about Karma is one more lie and one more lie is just one too many.

She watches Shane as about a hundred different emotions swirl over his face and at least one of them, she thinks, (the BIG one) is the look-equivalent of 'I _knew_ it!' and then she sits up and he follows her and now it's his turn to sound like Lauren.

" _And?"_

"And Karma's faking it," Amy says again. "And so was I and then I kissed her and now I'm not so... _no_ … I _am sure_. I'm sure I'm not straight, at least not when it comes to her, and you can get pissed at me and at her all you want but it's your own fucking fault. You and this school and it's bizzaro faux acceptance bullshit and our society as a whole that teaches girls like Karma that popularity is _the_ thing and fuckers like you and _him_ that reinforce it and right now, I'm tired and I stink and I'm going to shower."

Amy climbs of the bed and Shane stays there, looking like someone just told him the Earth is really flat or Tim Gunn can't sew or that orange is _not_ the new black and Lauren's waiting by their bathroom door with a towel in her hand and another look on her face Amy can't read and she really doesn't care.

Caring is tiring and lying is tiring and worrying about Shane and Karma and Lauren and everyone _else_ , _all the fucking time_ , is tiring and she didn't sleep worth a damn, so you know what?

Fuck it.

* * *

Shane's still there when she gets out of the shower and Amy has to admit she's a little surprised.

But only _a little_ because whatever else this is, whatever else Karma faking it and her sorta faking it is (besides offensive and wrong and horrible and just… icky), it's also _gossip_. It's news, it's a stunner, it's the biggest thing like _ever_ and there's no way Shane's just walking away from that.

Especially when it's kinda his fault.

Amy tosses her towel into the hamper and pulls on the hem of her sweatshirt, tugging it down over her knees as she settles into her desk chair. Shane's still on the bed (she's not sure he's _moved_ ) but Lauren is over by the door, leaning against it and Amy's not sure if that's to keep Shane there or _her_.

"You," he says, "have my _attention_."

"I don't want your attention," Amy says, the words tumbling out before she can think about them and even though she knows it's the truth, she also knows it's probably not the best tactic to take with a guy who now holds your life (at least the high school portion of it) in his hands.

But she's like three-quarters of the way from not giving a fuck to actively trying to ruin her own life so she goes with it.

"Amy -" Lauren's trying to warn her but Amy waves her off and, surprisingly, she shuts up and since that will probably _never_ work again, Amy takes a moment to revel in the small victory.

"I'm not _trying_ to be a bitch, Shane," she says. "But I don't want your attention. I never did. I never wanted _any_ of this."

Shane eyes her from the bed with an inscrutable look on his face (who says SAT vocab lessons don't pay off?). Amy gets it, she really does, she gets why the doubting Thomas act. Shane, like Lauren, has a hard time believing _anyone_ would _not_ want everything that's just been handed to Amy of late. Popularity. Power. Notoriety and attention and celebration and more than a few people's desires and lusts and even if those people aren't her type (like she's got _any_ idea what that is anymore), it's still a heady feeling. The kind of feeling Shane lives for.

And so, apparently, does Karma.

But Amy isn't Karma and she's sure as hell not Shane and, if anything, she's probably closest to Lauren and even _thinking_ that is so fucking odd it's almost too much.

"I was _happy_ , Shane," she says. "I was perfectly content in my little world...in _our_ little world and then you had to come along and now…" Amy shakes her head in frustration and aggravation and probably a few more '-tion' words she can't think of right now (needs more vocab lessons, clearly.) "Now there's a Karma and Liam world _and_ a Karmy world _and_ a 'I might be gay or maybe I'm just gay for Karma' world _and_ a very large 'this big ass lie is gonna blow up in our faces but I'm the only one who seems to give a _shit_ because the other _liar_ is too busy using that lie to get into _your_ best friend's pants."

She pulls the sweatshirt tighter over her knees and runs her fingers through her still wet hair and if there's a moment in there, in her big speech, when she wishes she could change things, that she could find a way back to the world where none of this was happening and she wasn't realizing _anything_ and she had never so much as _thought_ about kissing Karma?

Well… it's a tinier moment than she would have thought. But it's still there.

"And," she says, "I know what we… what she… what _we_ did is… wrong -"

If she didn't have Shane's attention before, she does now. "Wrong?" Lauren tenses against the door but Amy doesn't flinch. She knew this was coming and she knows, on so many levels, she deserves it. " _Wrong?"_ Shane asks again, rising up to his knees on the bed. "You pretended to be gay to be popular. You lied to me… to _everyone_. You told us you were _gay_."

"Technically," Lauren chimes in, " _you_ said that. I'm pretty sure Amy denied it. More than once, actually."

Shane wheels on her and glares at her for just a moment but then he's right back on Amy because _Lauren_ has a point and all _Amy_ has is a big fat fucking lie that's insulting to everything Shane is.

"There are people who wake up every single day, scared to death to come out," he snaps at her. " _Actual_ gay men and women who have to live in fear of being shunned or beaten or just simply hated for who they are."

"I know," Amy says. She knew that even before the project and then she did the research and yeah, she _knows_.

"There are people on the spectrum," Shane says, "people who haven't identified yet or they can't identify and some of us even look down on them, like the way some straight people do."

Amy makes a conscious point of _not_ looking at Lauren and not even _thinking_ about her pills or her 'condition' or what Shane would say if he knew what those pills he spread shit about were really for. She knows Shane's right, better than he could ever imagine.

"And _you_ took all that and _you_ lied about it," he says. "You lied so you could be _popular_."

"I lied so Karma could be popular," Amy says, though she's not sure that distinction makes anything better in Shane's eyes (or even her own) at this point. "And, as things turns out," she says, "it wasn't so much a lie as it was a… I don't know… what's a word for 'I didn't know I wasn't lying when I started lying and oh, a funny thing happened on my way to being fake gay, it kinda turned out to be not so fake'?"

Shane shakes his head, like he's arguing with himself and he probably is and Amy understands _that_ too.

"So you _are_ gay, then?" he asks and Amy can hear the hope dripping off his words and she gets that too because it would make it… better… somehow. Or at least less horrible. It might not excuse all of it, but maybe some of it, at least _enough_ of it so that maybe he can forgive _her_ and go back to only hating on Karma which, they all know, would be so much easier for him.

"Yes," Amy says with a nod. "Or…" She doesn't want to lie to him, _again_ , and in this very moment, saying she's all-the-way-gay _would_ be a lie or at least an exaggeration of sorts and she knows that's not any better. "Maybe?" It's the best she can do and the most _honest_ she can be.

"Maybe?" Shane asks, the hope fading just a little.

"I don't _know_ ," Amy says. "All I _do_ know is that I kissed Karma and everything… changed. _I_ changed. I never even thought… boys… girls.. it was never a thing for me."

"It was always just her," Shane says and there's a touch less anger in his voice and he and Lauren share a look and Amy wonders what, _exactly_ , they talked about while she was in the shower and _that's_ a conversation she and sister-to-be will be having later.

She nods again. "I don't know what I am," she says. "Except that I'm head over heels in love with a girl who is _desperately_ trying to make your giant perv of a best friend fall in love with her, and I don't know if that makes me gay or bi or…"

"Karmasexual," Lauren says and Amy laughs at the absurdity _and_ perfection of it, and even Shane cracks a smile.

"Yeah," Amy says. " _That_. I don't know. I just… I'm in love." She looks right at Shane, still sitting there on the bed. "And I'm tired. I'm so tired, Shane. I'm tired of hiding and I'm tired of not knowing and I'm tired of _caring_ that I don't know and of hiding that I don't know, especially from the one person I shouldn't _have_ to hide it from and I'm…"

She brings a hand to her mouth and shudders out a breath and refuses to meet his gaze now because she knows she's not supposed to be the one crying. She's the one who _lied_ and maybe she didn't lie _as much_ as Karma (even if she's actually lying more _to_ Karma) and she's the faker and she's the one mocking everything that matters to Shane (and so many others) and she never meant to but what you _mean_ to do doesn't matter.

Only what you _do_.

And what _Shane_ does right then… well.. it shocks the hell out of _her_ (and Lauren) and no matter where she ends up, no matter what LGBTQIA letter she ends up with (and she's not sure she can even take just _one_ ), _this_ is what Amy will remember. Shane climbs off the bed and stands before her but she doesn't want to look at him because she's not sure she can take one more angry look but then his arms are open and her 'come here' wiggles his fingers at her and Amy practically dives off the chair into his embrace and he holds her tight as she sobs into his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she says, over and over and over. Shane kisses the top of her head and runs his hands along her back and he doesn't say a thing and Lauren silently blinks back tears of her own (and Shane will _so_ needle her about that _later_ ) and they stay like that, the three of them, for a long while. Until Amy's tears are done.

At least for now.


	6. In Da Club

The lighting's bad, the music's too loud, the drinks are (thankfully, cause _lightweight_ ) watered down and (not so thankfully cause _poor_ ) over priced, and most of the girls (and _all_ the guys) are showing _way_ more skin than they're covering.

In short, it's Shane's idea of heaven.

Amy on the other hand…

She wonders, not for the first time, why she _didn't_ listen to Lauren ('worst. idea. ever.') and why she _did_ let _him_ talk her into this, why she let his holding her and comforting her and (apparent) forgiveness of her lies and deceits (though now she's not so sure he _has_ forgiven her cause… _here_ ) persuade her into listening him and thinking, even for a second, that he actually had some idea how to solve her problem.

This was _Shane_ after all. The man ( _boy_ ) who had never met a problem he didn't think snark, a little blackmail and a whole lot of making out couldn't solve.

"The best way to get over someone," he said before Amy cut him off, reminding him even as she huddled in his arms, tears drying on her cheeks, that she didn't actually _want_ to get _over_ Karma, at least not yet. Not while there was still _some_ (read: ridiculous and faint and desperate and pretending that Liam fukcing Booker didn't exist or had been swallowed by a black hole) hope that maybe (possibly) (might) (like a .000001% chance but that's still a _chance_ ) Karma might have felt something during that kiss.

She said 'woah' after all.

"Fine," Shane said and Amy had pretended not to hear the dismissal in his tone. "You don't strike me as the 'get under' someone type anyway, though trust me, you're missing out."

Amy was sure, on some level, that she probably _was_ though there was _no_ chance (not even a .000001% one) that she'd admit that to _him_. She hadn't even really broached the subject with Lauren and it was hard enough dealing with it herself. Kissing Karma hadn't just awakened _feelings_ she didn't know she had. It had woken… _hidden lustful desires_. And yes, that was just about that cheesiest and most ridiculous and bad _Supernatural_ fanfic like way she could think to express it, but it was also the most _accurate_.

She hadn't noticed it at first, not with her mind such a swirl of Karma and feelings and Karma and kisses and Karma and lies and Karma and _Booker_ and did she mention Karma? The feelings part of the equation had dominated her brain and she hadn't, for most of the first week of faking it, slowed down enough to even think about anything else, much less _feel_ or _want_ or _need_.

And then there'd been the dream.

Her. And Karma. And less clothes than usual. And lips. Everywhere. _Everywhere_. And then Lauren had barged into her room and caught them and then she'd been followed by Ivy and then Brandi and then some blonde Amy had seen around school and then Mrs. Harper, their fifth grade teacher with the huge…

Pots.

Pots _and_ pans. Clattering in the kitchen as Farrah, for some inexplicable reason, chose _that_ Saturday morning to try and cook family breakfast and Amy snapped up in her bed, the dream fuzzing out and the spell broken and (even as she checked frantically around her) no actual outward signs that she'd been dreaming of _that_.

Except the fluttering in her stomach. And the racing heart in her chest. And the ache (the very very _wet_ ache) between her legs and the question racing through her mind of _what the absolute fuck_ was _that_?

She couldn't look Karma or Lauren in the eye for three days and she feigned sick to avoid gym class cause she shared that with Brandi _and_ Karma and no, seeing _either_ of them (much less _both_ ) in just towels was so not a good idea right then.

(even if parts of her argued that it was an _exceptional fucking idea_ and _why was she not doing that, right fucking now?_ )

Amy was _still_ a bit scandalized by the whole thing, still a bit shocked at the way her hormones seemed to kick in overnight, and then announce their presence as loudly (and wetly) (and nearly uncontrollably) as possible at the most inopportune moments.

Like when she found her eyes wandering in class or at the mall or (most unfortunately) during lesbian research movie nights with Karma, nights when she was _convinced_ Karma knew what was going on and was actively _trying_ to fuck with her, choosing the most titillating and arousing and fucking _hot_ movies and it drove Amy nuts, like when she found herself enjoying the Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried kiss in _Jennifer's Body_ a little more than she might have a week before or when she shifted uncomfortably on the bed when Brittany Snow's eyes roamed down Anna Kendrick's body in the _Pitch Perfect_ shower scene (and , like, had Anna _always_ been that hot?)

Or when she absolutely, one hundred percent, no chance in fucking _hell_ refused to watch _Blue is the Warmest Color_ cause Lauren was right across the hall and her mother was right downstairs and Karma was wearing her favorite outfit (that she hadn't even _realized_ was her favorite until _right fucking then_ ) the onesie kinda thing, the one that made her look like she wasn't wearing pants when she flopped on the bed and how had she never noticed that Karma was like ninety five percent leg (and the other five was ass) before?

Love was a bitch but lust, Amy was discovering a little more every day, was _hell_.

So, yeah, Shane _was_ right, she isn't exactly the 'getting under to get over' type (and she's read enough lesbian literature _and_ erotica online in the last few weeks and then had a few more 'inspired' dreams to know that she's not sure she'd ever be the ' _under'_ type anyway) but right about now with the watered down drinks and the thumping bass and the idea of Shane's plan ( _time to kiss some lesbians_ ) ( _or at least girls who might be lesbians) (or lesbians for the evening and really does it matter as long as they're girls and you're kissing them?)_ echoing in her head, she's not sure she wouldn't reconsider that stance.

For the right girl.

Like that one over there in the mini skirt and when she says 'mini' Amy's not sure she's ever meant the word _more_. Or maybe that one, over there, in the crop top that's barely a top and Amy's quickly developing an appreciation for what they call 'underboob' (and feeling more like a horny teenage boy by the fucking second). Or maybe that one… or that one… or _that_ one and oh, _fuck all_ , she's so unbelievably _screwed_.

And not in the way Shane (or her, to be honest) would prefer.

"This," Lauren mutters at her side _again_ , "is the worst idea ever."

Amy's not entirely sure her sister-to-be _isn't_ wrong but she's also not entirely sure Shane's argument didn't have something of a point.

"You don't know if this is all about Karma or if you're actually _gay_ or if this is just some sort of weird faking it induced lesbosis," he said.

"Lesbosis?"

"Lesbian psychosis," Shane said. "It's a thing. Squirkle it."

Amy had, for just a moment, considered throwing him out on his remarkably intolerant ass but he wasn't _all_ wrong. She didn't know _anything_ , not for _sure_ , and there was no way she could see to move forward until she did. Or, at least, until she knew _something_.

"You've kissed Karma and that's made you feel… _things_ ," Shane said. He'd moved from her bed and was rifling through her closet in search of something, the ever growing frown on his face (and the pile of clothes he was tossing aside) told her that he hadn't found it. "So now you need to figure out if those things are all about _her_ or all about _you_. In short," he said, "you need to kiss some lesbians."

Well, of _course_ she did. Who would've ever thought otherwise?

Oh. Wait…

"Or," Amy said. "I could just talk to Karma about my feelings and explain to her that when we kissed I started to feel something and I realized I've been in love with her since…"

She trailed off, Lauren and Shane both staring at her, her bacon sweats clutched in Shane's surprisingly dainty hands.

"So," she said. "Where do we find these lesbians?"

The _where_ turned out to be an underground rave just inside the city limits. Shane's sister, Sasha, had once been a regular at such… gatherings… and had passed on her contacts to Shane as something of a graduation gift when she'd gone to college. He was, he said, a semi-regular (though if the number of men in neon latex outfits who greeted him by name was any indication, 'semi' might have been a bit of an understatement.)

"What's this thing like?" Lauren had asked, clearly stating her intent to go with them (though not in so many words) and Amy was relieved that she was coming _and_ even more relieved that Shane didn't bother trying to argue the point.

"It's like a party," he said, frowning again at Amy's clothes as she breathed a sigh of relief. She'd done parties before. OK, maybe _party_ (singular) (his) and maybe it hadn't gone quite as well as it could have (he'd outed them) and she hadn't been looking to kiss anyone (not even Karma, _then_ ) but still… she could handle a party.

"It's like a party meets Tinder meets Grindr," he said, "meets Craigslist with a smidge of Pornhub and just a dash of 'you won't know what happened in the morning'," he said. "You know. The usual."

Amy sat on her bed and made a mental note to reevaluate her life choices. And her friendships.

So, yeah, the lighting _is_ bad and the music _is_ loud (though not too _bad_ , the DJ seems to have some skills) and there's more skin than Amy's really comfortable with and there's a dude in the corner dressed like he's on _Breaking Bad_ (like Jesse and not Walter and not tightie-whities) and she's pretty sure he's selling Ecstasy and the bouncers seemed more concerned that their IDs weren't fake _enough_ but Amy's here and there is no shortage of girls and so maybe, just maybe, this won't turn out to be as bad as she thinks.

And then she turns around and Shane's gone and Lauren's nowhere to be found and yeah….

Worst. Idea. Ever.

* * *

Never again.

Never ever again.

Never fucking ever ever again.

She will _never_ listen to Shane again, no matter how logical he seems or how much of a gay guru he claims to be or no matter what secrets she tells him and needs him to never tell anyone.

Amy has no idea where he is and she's pretty sure that's intentional. Shane's one of those that would teach a kid to swim by tossing them in a fucking lake and hoping they don't drown. She's caught sight of him a couple times, for fleeting moments across the club and then he's gone again, like he's dropped down the rabbit hole (or, knowing Shane, dropped _down_ and she _so_ doesn't want to see _that_ , so no, she's not looking _too_ hard) (no pun intended.)

And as for Lauren…

"It wasn't my fault," Lauren says. She's wobbling back and forth on one foot, doing some sort of ballet like pose in front of Amy, or _trying to_ cause mostly she's weaving to and fro in (not really) time with the music (which has continued to not suck and that's about the only _positive_ of this whole fucking thing) and her eyes are glassy and she's said it's not her fault every thirty seconds for the last ten minutes. She got a tiny pacifier on a tiny string dangling from her neck and Amy swears to _God_ if the tiny blonde actually puts it in her mouth she's leaving her there.

Except then she'd be alone. Again. So… no.

"It was loud," Lauren says, as if volume explains high and paci and dancing like a drunk penguin. "And I had a… you know… it hurt… _here_." She waves her hand around in circle over her head and Amy watches as her eyes follow her fingers and then she tips off balance and stumbles (again) into the wall.

"Headache," Amy says. "I know. You told me. Over and over and over again. You had a headache and then you thought you'd ask Heisenberg over there if he had some Ibuprofen and how were you supposed to know he'd sell you X, right?"

Lauren pushes herself upright, her fingers fumbling with the pacifier as her eyes grow wide. " _I'm on Ecstasy_?" Amy rolls her eyes and leans against the wall and recites Lauren's lines in her head even as the other girl blurts them out, one after the other.

I'm on Ecstasy and Oh. My. God. and what about my pageant career and what will I do if daddy finds out and I'll never be President now cause Clinton and Obama might have done weed but this is X and why didn't I just do weed cause all that does is make you hungry but then I would've just eaten my feelings and they don't taste good, not like Cool Ranch Doritos and do you think they have any of those I think I'm gonna go find some.

And then she's off, disappearing into the crowd in search of the elusive Cool Ranch and Amy _thinks_ she _should_ be worried, but this is the fifth chip hunt in the last hour and Lauren's come back, every time (usually with pretzels) and she's feeling a bit peckish herself (it's the watered down drinks, she thinks) so she lets Lauren go and tips her head back against the wall, letting her eyes shut as the bass thrum-thrum-thrums through her skull.

She's _talked_ to two girls, _danced_ with three (though two were _high_ _high high_ and couldn't manage much more than a sway, which wasn't really a dance and certainly wasn't a _grind_ which even _Amy_ knows is the precursor to the kiss) and hasn't _kissed_ a one, hasn't even come close, hasn't even come within lip distance of anyone but Lauren and no, _that's_ not happening, dream or no fucking dream.

Never again. Just… never.

Amy lets the music wash over her and tries not to freak or panic or storm out into the middle of the dance floor and scream for Shane (not that he, or anyone, would hear her.) No, this isn't the sort of thing she'd normally do and no, she's not comfortable (not in the fucking least) and yes, she wants to go home (she really wants to go to Karma's and tell her all about this and curl up on her best friend's bed and laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing is but that's _not_ happening for all the obvious reasons), but she can't do that and she can't find a girl to kiss (truthfully, she gave up looking long ago) and so the best she can do is listen to the music and drink her weak ass mixer and wait for Lauren to bring her snacks.

But then there's pushing. And shoving. And loud yelling of words she can't quite make out over the music but there's three girls and two guys and something about 'cheating' and a 'bathroom' and 'your fucking knees' and one of the guys _looks_ like Shane (but _isn't_ ) and one of the girls _looks_ like she's psycho (and _is_ ) and Amy tries to beat a hasty retreat (or as hasty as Amy ever does anything) but they're there and then they're over there and then they're right in front of her and the only place she has to go?

Is up.

Up, up, up the ladder to the DJ station and from there Amy can see _everything_ and by everything she totally means Shane in the far corner of the club with a dude wearing more eye shadow than she is and with his hand resting on a part of Shane she'd rather bleach her own eyes than look at. And Lauren, by the bar, on the floor in some sort of prayer circle with four other girls (Amy thinks they're girls, but it's a distance and the long hair means nothing and neither do the skirts or crop tops, so…) with a bowl of pretzels and a pitcher of beer between them. She can see her friend and her soon to be sister and all the other drunk and high and frighteningly desperate people.

And the DJ.

The DJ who's staring at her with dark eyes under perfectly sculpted eyebrows ( _perfectly_ ) (like who knew brows could do _that_ ) (and if they did know why did they not tell anyone?) and brushing back long dark hair with perfectly shaded purple tips from her cheeks, tiny wispy tendrils of it fluttering against perfectly red and perfectly plump lips (and yes, that's a lot of _perfect_ in one tiny space but… _fuck_ ) and if Amy's heart belongs only to Karma, well…

The rest of her might not be so locked down.


	7. The Test

Her name (the DJ) is Reagan and she's nineteen, a DJ by night and a cater-waiter by day (and sometimes also at night), she loves cats, hates reggae, has no food allergies and a brother and a divorced dad living at home.

It takes Amy about ten minutes to get all that, plopping herself down on the tiny stool behind the DJ (and not because of the view) (not. at. all.) and asking question after question after question after… you get the idea… and waiting for the other girl (wait… _woman_ … she's _nineteen_ after all) to get sick of her and send her packing.

But Reagan doesn't. No matter how many questions Amy asks (and there's a… well… an _Amy_ amount of them), Reagan just answers and smiles and answers and laughs and answers and does other… _things…_ that Amy doesn't really notice cause, well, there's the sound of Reagan's voice (and _dear God_ she didn't know that level of husky existed in nature) and there's the sight of her smile (that parts those lips just _enough_ ) and the way she arches those brows after certain questions (and Amy is fuck all at reading signs but she swears every little wiggle, every little arch, every little up and down is a fucking invitation.)

(she's not wrong)

So Amy sits there, content and calm (mostly) (not really) (but sweaty palms and racing heart because of hotness is _so_ different than sweaty palms and racing heart because of fear, so…) for the first time all night and peppers Reagan with questions. And, along the way, she also manages to find time to share all her own important deets.

"I'm Amy."

Yeah. So there's that.

She thinks about sharing more, about telling Reagan that she's single (which is _technically_ not a lie) and gay (which is also, _technically_ , not a lie) (though probably closer to one than the single thing) though _she_ suspects that _Reagan_ suspects and that, Amy figures, is probably that gaydar thing and _that's_ gotta be a sign, right?

If you're popping up on DJ Hottie's gaydar, you gotta be at least a _little_ gay, right?

(And yes, she knows there's no such thing as a _little_ gay but she's distracted by the brows and the lips and the… other stuff… so just cut her a little slack, OK?)

For her part, Reagan doesn't seem to mind that Amy doesn't share much or that she asks _everything._ If Amy's reading the signs right (and for once, she really is), Reagan actually finds 20 Questions (multiplied by like ten) to be kinda cute and endearing and while Amy might prefer hot and sultry and sexy, she'll take what she can get cause _whatever_ it is, it's _real_.

There's moments (a few) when the blonde seems to have exhausted her list of questions and the two of them lapse into a comfortable silence (something Amy didn't know could exist outside of Karma) as Reagan flicks dials and switches (and Amy blushes as she watches the way Reagan's fingers twirl the knobs and she's not sure why, at first, and then she realizes and blushes even _more_ ) (but doesn't look away) (not even for a second.) With Reagan's every movement, the music responds and for Amy, it's like watching a snake charmer at work, calling the serpent and then _taming_ it, making it shift and coil and roll through the place, slipping between the people and the walls and the floor and surrounding them all, squeezing them tight.

Watching Reagan work is, in a word? Hot.

Fucking hot.

(Yes. _Two_ words. Very _appropriate_ words.)

It's in one of those comfortable silences, one filled only by the hypnotic dance track Reagan turns loose on the crowd, one that lulls Amy herself into something of a trance (which has _nothing_ to do with the way Reagan's hips sway back and forth as she stands at her deck) that the DJ settles down onto the stool next to Amy (not the _stool_ next to her, like there's another one, cause there's not, there's just _the one_ and they're on it _together_ and that means they're _close_ and there are touching hips and brushing arms and she can smell the DJ's perfume and see the sweat beading on her skin cause Reagan is _soclose_ and fuck the trance, Amy is _wide awake_ ) and then she _asks_.

"So… best friend?"

Amy's distracted (just a little) by the way the words roll off the other girl's tongue (and that she's close enough to actually _see_ said tongue) so she almost misses the question.

Almost.

"I don't… um… what do you… I…" Amy stammers before sighing and hanging her head (only partly to _stop looking_ ). "How did you know?"she asks. "Do I have some kind of lesbian scarlet letter?"

Reagan laughs and fuck all, if the _voice_ was hot… "Trust me," she says. "If _you_ did, we _all_ would. It's a rite of passage, you know?" She bobs her head in time with the beat, fingers drumming on one knee. "There's like three of them Fall for the best friend, and in those rare circumstances when best friend turns out to _not_ be straight, then later on, after best friend thing fails _spectacularly_ , fall for a _different_ straight girl, spend an inordinate amount of money on flannel, and rent at least one U-Haul."

She side eyes Amy and can't help laughing (again), and it's a boisterous rip roaring kind of thing that shakes her whole body (and that just makes them _closer_ and that means Amy doesn't mind being laughed _at_ ) (much), losing it at the way the blonde looks like she's taking mental notes and cataloging every single thing Reagan says in case there's a quiz later.

 _Pop Quiz Hot Shot: You're a baby lez looking for a kiss. What do you do? What do you do?_

(the answer is simple: never listen to Shane fucking Harvey)

"So," Reagan says, gently hip checking Amy on the stool. "Want to talk about it?"

Amy shakes her head. And then nods. And then shakes her head again and then starts to nod but her neck cramps up and she jerks her head to the side like she's seizing and she nearly knocks Reagan off the stool.

" _That_ bad?" The DJ asks, scooting back to regain her balance, one arm snaking around Amy's waist to hang on (and Amy's breath catches in a way that tells her she might not _need_ to be _kissed_ to know if it's just a Karma thing.) "Now you _have_ to tell me."

"Not much to tell," Amy says ( _lies_ ) (but it's not like she can tell this girl, this _woman_ , this _lesbian_ that she was once - for an afternoon - a total _faker_ , that she _played_ gay, a faubian as Lauren so accurately put it.) "We've been best friends since we were tiny and then one day we kissed and…"

"And everything changed," Reagan says and Amy glances up, but the older girl isn't looking at _her,_ she's staring off into space and there's this look on her face and yeah, maybe she was joking about the flannel and the U Haul ( _maybe_ ) but Amy thinks at least part of the whole 'rite of passage' bit might have been spoken from experience. "Is she gay too," Reagan asks. "The best friend?"

Amy almost does the head shake into the nod maneuver again but thinks better of it cause _that_ would be wishful thinking of the highest order. "I don't know," she says, which is _technically_ the truth because _maybe_ Karma is, stranger things have certainly happened. (See: right fucking now.) "She's… I mean, the kiss was… and she loves me, I _know_ that, but…" But, but, but, always a but, and this one, Amy knows, has a name, though she refuses to says it. "There's a guy…"

She tries, really hard, to pretend she doesn't see the way Reagan winces, just for a second, before a neutral expression (a _mask_ and Amy _knows_ it) falls back into place.

And that tells her pretty much all she needs to know.

"I'm fucked, aren't I?"

Reagan shrugs and scoots off the stool, and Amy tries (again) to not _assume_ that no answer is the _bad_ answer and that really, Reagan doesn't _know_ cause every situation is different and every best friend is different and just because her's ended up one way, doesn't mean….

Amy would have to be on the same shit Lauren is to buy _that_. And maybe not even then.

Reagan moves back to her deck and the song changes again, going harder, the bass ricocheting off the walls like bullets and there's a tension in the air that even Amy can pick up on and she thinks maybe (probably) she's overstayed her welcome and maybe (probably) she's brought up some bad memories and maybe ( _definitely_ ) she should go, so she stands and moves toward the ladder.

"It's always different," Reagan says and Amy freezes, three steps from the ladder. "Sometimes, they're as confused as you. They don't know what to make of it all and that scares the shit out of them, you know?"

Amy's got an idea, yeah. And Karma _is_ easily scared. Stage fright and heights and hot boys and the only thing that's _never_ scared her _is_ Amy. For whatever that's worth.

"Sometimes," Reagan says, "they do what you're doing, they try to figure it out. Go to a club or a coffee shop or _Sizzer_ and try to find someone… a test." She glances over her shoulder at Amy. "That _is_ what you're here for, right? Try it out? Give it a spin and see if it's her or if it's _you_?"

Amy nods, slowly, and somehow when Reagan says it… it seems a little more wrong. A little dirtier. A little more shameful than 'you need to kiss some lesbians'. Like, suddenly, she's the fake (again) and she's the Karma and she's got no right to be here and she's leading everyone on, except she still remembers how it felt when Reagan touched her and how it felt when Reagan looked at her and she thinks (more definitely than ever before) that this _isn't_ a test.

But then for a second, the tiniest of tiny moments, Amy imagines herself, three or four or five years from now, dancing in a place like this or sitting at a square formica table in a coffee shop or swiping through profiles on some craptastic dating app, waiting for the new girl, the one she thinks might change her life.

The one who thinks of _her_ as a _test_.

She has a sudden urge to apologize but then that's swamped under by Reagan, by her body and her hands and her… _everything_ … so close, right next to her and Amy doesn't even remember her moving but she's _there_ and her hands are on Amy's arms, gently rubbing (and Amy's _so_ glad Shane picked out the sleeveless number.)

And then Reagan's leaning in and Amy has only a moment - the _absolute_ tiniest of the tiny - a split second of seeing Shane down on the floor, looking up at her with the biggest grin on his face and his hands clasped in front of him with almost fatherly pride and then he's gone because her eyes are shut and Reagan's lips are on hers and _oh oh oh fuck_

Kissing Karma was… indescribable. It was world shaking and life changing and even if Amy lives to be one hundred and kisses a girl a year, every year, she will _never_ forget that kiss.

And this one?

This is one is very describable. It's not world shaking or life changing, not like Karma, not like her _first_ , but it is… incredible seems _inadequate_. She can feel every inch, every single bit of Reagan's lips as they slide across hers, she can feel it _everywhere_ (yes, even _there_ , but that's so the _least_ of what she's experiencing) and her legs shake and her palms sweat even as she works on autopilot and brings them up, finding Reagan's hips and pulling the older girl closer, instinctively deepening the kiss and then there's a tongue (Reagan's) and then another (hers) and Reagan's arms around her, hands on the small of her back and she tastes so different, so _not_ Karma and that's _so_ a good thing, a wonderful thing, a _perfect_ thing.

And then it's done.

Amy doesn't move, doesn't breathe, she's not sure she _can_ and she's afraid if she tries to walk she'll stumble and topple down the ladder and _that_ would kill the moment now wouldn't it? But Reagan's still there (her lips aren't and Amy's a bit sadder about that than she would have expected) but her hands back on Amy's arms and she's not moving away, not running screaming for the door, telling everyone of the worst kiss she's ever had.

Amy's totes gonna count that as a win.

"So," Reagan says. "Is it her? Or is it -"

She's cut off by Amy's lips and Amy's hands back on her hips and by the way Amy (quiet and polite and sure to be a bottom except fuck _that_ Amy) pushes her back against the railing and she knows (they both do) that this is a bad idea and this is so not going anywhere (cause Karma) (and cause Charolette who Amy doesn't know by name but does know by far off look in Reagan's eye) but it's a _moment_ and a _good_ one (really good) and one they both kinda need so the DJ rolls with it and brings her own hands up to cup Amy's cheeks and kisses her back, like it's their first and last and every kiss in between.

"Me," Amy says when they _finally_ break, her forehead tipped against Reagan's, the word tumbling out before she can think, before she can second guess and wonder and over analyze it into the fucking ground. "Definitely _me_."

Her eyes open and Reagan's still there, not moving away, but her hands are at her sides, gripping the railing and, for a moment, Amy wishes they were on her again, pressed against the small of her back, fingers brushing her skin. There's a look on Reagan's face that Amy can't quite read and she thinks maybe she'd like to, maybe she'd like to learn what all this girl's looks mean, what it signals when Reagan chews on her bottom lip like that or when prys her hands from the railing and stuffs them into her pockets and stares at the ground or the wall or anywhere but at Amy.

She'd like to. But Amy's pretty sure that's not gonna happen.

"She's an idiot," Amy says and Reagan's head snaps up, their eyes meeting and she offers the girl a smile. "Whoever she is? She's an idiot. And you can tell her I said so."

Reagan smiles back but it's not like the one Amy saw when she first climbed the ladder, it's sadder and it speaks volumes ( _yeah,_ it says, _but she was_ my _idiot_ ) (and Amy gets _that_.) The song ends and Reagan moves to her deck, their hands brushing as she goes and it lingers, that touch, for just a moment, two fingers laced together and feels so real and so familiar and comfortable, it's almost like, in another life, it happened all the time.

And then she's gone. Back to her deck and her lips and her hands and her fingers are busy at work and there's another silence (not quite as comfortable) (the kind that screams if you don't go now you never will) and Amy slips away and down the ladder, back into the throng. In a minute, she'll find Shane and she'll _make_ him help her get Lauren out of here and they'll all head home and at least one of her questions will have been answered.

In a minute.

Cause first, she leans against the ladder and she thinks of that smile, the sad one, the 'my idiot' one, and Amy figures that chances are good she's gonna have one of those, an 'it failed _spectacularly_ ' one, and maybe in a year or two or three, she'll be flashing it at some other silly girl on a dance floor or across a coffee shop table or at the end of a date that's a _first_ and a _last_.

As she heads off to find Shane and Lauren (and doesn't once look back no matter how much she wants to), Amy can only hope that _that_ girl? Whoever she is? She hopes that girl thinks of her as fondly as she knows _she'll_ always think of Reagan.


	8. Burdens

Amy's not sure what time she finally falls asleep. She's not drunk (Shane) or high (Lauren) but she can't get her mind to stop. Stop moving, stop going, stop whirring and whirling and playing it over and over and over. Every time she closes her eyes, she keeps seeing (and feeling) ( _so_ feeling) Reagan and her lips and her hands and her body and…

And she closes her eyes. _A lot_.

She's not sure when sleep finally comes and she's even less sure how it is she wakes in the morning with Shane wrapped around her from behind and her head tucked under Lauren's chin and if that's not the strangest cuddle sandwich she's ever been a part of (and really, it's the _only_ one, so there's that.) Amy can hear them, whispering or, really, _trying_ to cause Shane's still clearly sorta drunk and Lauren's still clearly sorta high and they're both still sorta arguing with each other.

So, you know, the usual.

Amy does her best to ignore it, to stay in her little cocoon of cuddles and memories and those few thoughts trickling through that maybe (just maybe) things will be OK. It's easier for her to do that now and yeah, she knows one (or two) kisses from some girl she's never going to see again really doesn't change anything, it doesn't mean Karma's going to suddenly love her and it doesn't mean she's not still going to have to figure out who she is, exactly, or tell people about it or deal with it for the rest of her life.

But at least now she's got one (or two) nice memories to hold onto, even when the shit hits the fan and she's pretty sure the fan's gonna get drilled eventually.

So, for now, she tries to ignore the annoyed (Lauren) and defensive (Shane) whispers flying back and forth over her head and focuses, instead, on the sense of being close to someone (or, in her case, a _pair_ or someones), of being held and comforted and even, in a way, _loved_. It's enough to make her squeeze her eyes shut and snuggle a little closer and not want to move.

 _That's_ not gonna last and she knows it, but for the moment? Well… Amy's slowly learning to appreciate the good moments, even the shortest ones, even the ones she knows are nothing more than momentary waystations on the path to that shit and that fan and the end of everything as she's ever known it. Even the ones that are nothing more than being wrapped in four drunk and high arms connected to two drunk and high mouths being run by two drunk and high minds with nothing better to do than argue over what's best for her.

Shane and Lauren as parents. It's almost enough to make her laugh.

She feels the weight shifting on the bed as Lauren moves and Amy knows that sooner or later, she's gotta wake up. She just votes for later. Much later. As later as possible. As later as it takes for her to be _sure_ she's gay (or bi) (or pan) (or some other letter she hasn't finished researching on the Internet yet) and as later as it takes for her to not be in love with her straight best friend and not be finding comfort in kissing girls (even hot DJ ones) she'll never see again or in Shane's arms.

Amy's not entirely sure such a later exists or that she won't have to wait until she's like ninety-five to find it, but, for the moment at least, she's willing to wait. Wait and listen.

"Bad idea," Lauren whispers (and yes, Amy notes that her sister-to-be seems to think _every_ idea Shane has is bad and until Reagan, she might have been inclined to agree.) "She's not ready, Shane. She's not even fucking close."

Amy sighs softly and squeezes her eyes shut even tighter cause, yeah, maybe they're not talking _to_ her or _at_ her, but they're talking _about_ her and that, she thinks, might be even worse because _that's_ exactly what she doesn't want to be. She doesn't want to be the thing they have to whisper about and debate over and work on.

She's not their fucking project.

"Ready or not," Shane says, "it's what she needs to do. Trust me, I know -"

"No," Lauren snaps, her voice rising, heading right out of whisper-town. "You _don't_. You don't know shit about it. You've been out since you could fucking walk. You don't know anything about what it's like to deal with this kind of… burden… _now_."

Amy tenses in Shane's arms but he doesn't seem to notice. Burden. Lauren said burden and, apparently, _that_ Shane notices.

"A _burden_?" There's heat in his voice, and Amy winces at the sound. "So being gay is a burden?" he asks, the heat growing and she can feel the tension in his arms.

"Being gay _isn't_ the burden, dipshit," Lauren retorts and she's basically abandoned any attempt at keeping her voice down. "Putting up with everyone else _is_ the fucking burden. Everyone else like my stepmother who can barely relate to _straight_ Amy or my father who can barely handle me and I'm actually _his_."

It's a blurt, an outburst, a momentary lapse in her usual super precise not a word out of place way and Amy can almost _feel_ the regret (and the horror) (and the terror) (and the _oh fuck oh fuck fuck fuck_ ) radiating off of Lauren and she says a silent prayer that Shane's still drunk or hungover or just… _Shane_ … enough that he misses it.

No such luck.

" _You_? What the fuck does having to deal with you have to do with…"

He trails off and Amy knows he's going over it and over it in his head, running it back and forth and slowly (it is Shane, after all) and she knows where he's going to go with it even before he does, she knows he's going to come to the exact _wrong_ conclusion -

"Wait. Are you?" Shane scoots up on the bed, his grip on Amy faltering. "Are _you_ gay?"

Amy waits for the explosion, she waits for Lauren to lose it and to use her anger and rage and her wickedly sharp tongue to distract and diffuse and turn it back on Shane and nuke him back into the Stone Age. She knows Lauren _can_ and she knows Lauren _wants to_.

But she doesn't.

Instead, Amy pops her eyes open and watches as Lauren breaks right in front of her, as whatever is left of her high, whatever's left of the girl she turned into last night, the one who just wasn't _careful_ enough, falls away and all that's left is the girl Amy's come to know lately. The one who dropped an olive branch pill bottle in her lap.

The one that's scared out of her mind. A feeling Amy knows all too well.

She reaches out a hand and gently cups Lauren's cheek. It's an odd gesture, more intimate than anything they've done so far and Lauren's eyes flick down to Amy's and there's so many questions and so many fears dancing through them and for a moment (just _one_ ) Amy's almost glad for her own confusion and her own questions.

There are, she thinks, worse things.

"It's OK," she whispers and she feels Shane shift to look down at her. "I'm here," she says, "and maybe that doesn't mean all that much but -"

She's cut off by the feeling of Lauren's hand on hers and the feel of tears spilling over her skin and she pushes off of Shane and rolls, pulling Lauren into her arms as the other girl loses it and grips onto her like a life vest and Amy knows.

It means _everything_.


	9. Sunday

**With the show ending, I'm not sure how many folks will still be reading. I'm up for continuing, especially this story since it's kinda heading where the show might have been better off going, but only if people are interested. Let me know in reviews or a PM!**

It's not her secret to tell, so Amy doesn't.

(She isn't _Shane_ , after all.)

Shane asks, of _course_ , cause he _is_ Shane and he can't _not_ know something, especially when the something in question turned Lauren Cooper into a sobbing and quivering mess who willingly sought comfort in Amy's arms.

Amy can't blame him for wondering. She'd want to know too.

But, as she keeps telling him, it isn't _her_ secret. " _I'm_ not going to out someone, Shane," she says and yeah, maybe she regrets the little extra bite to her words (though the way his eyes drop and he fidgets uncomfortably tells her they hit their mark) but she's trying to make a point, one he just won't get cause he just keeps asking. "If she wants you to know, _she'll_ tell you."

Shane leans back against her closet door and he's clearly pissed and confused and a little hurt and Amy suspects (probably rightly so) that the hurt is because, for once, he's the odd man out, the one not in the know. "She told _you_ ," he says. "She doesn't even _like_ you." He shuffles his feet against her carpet and shoves his hands in his pockets, like a pouting child. "Well, she _didn't_. But now she does and now you two are hanging out and she's going places with us and you have secrets and I just don't _like_ it."

Amy props her head up on her pillow and stares at him, the tiniest of smiles slowly forming on her lips as she fights to keep the laugh down (cause inappropriate moment and all.) "You know who you sound like, right?"

"He sounds like Ashcroft," Lauren says. She's standing in the doorway to their shared bathroom and Amy sits up on the bed at the sound of her voice. "He sounds like a jealous girlfriend which is funny, really, cause the only person I know more into guys than him is _her_."

Amy and Shane both stare at her in silence (she disappeared ten minutes ago and neither of them was really _sure_ she was ever coming back) and Lauren fidgets in the doorway. It strikes Amy that this might be the first time she's ever seen the other girl uncomfortable with being the center of attention. She's changed (finally) out of her club wear and the tee shirt she's got on is about two sizes too big and that alone would be sign enough that it isn't hers, but the doughnuts dancing across the front seal the deal.

"You OK?"

Amy's eyes dart from Lauren to Shane and she tries to not let the shock that _he's_ the one asking register on her face, but it doesn't matter if it does because Lauren doesn't take the same pains to hide _hers_ , looking at him like he's just sprouted pretty pink wings and started flying through the air tossing glitter in his wake.

(Which is just _silly_.)

(Shane's wings would so _not_ be pink.)

"I'm…" She shakes her head and crosses the room, settling down on the edge of the bed, in front of Amy, but still keeping a safe distance.. "I'm fine," she says. "Well, I mean _obviously_ I'm not _fine_ , but I'll… manage." The way she says it, the way the word rolls of her tongue with a practiced ease, tells both Amy and Shane all they really need to know.

Lauren 'manages' a lot. More than they ever imagined.

Amy scoots up behind her and throws an arm around Lauren's shoulders, and yeah, she's still just a little surprised when the tiny blonde doesn't immediately push her away. Surprised, but happy, if happy is something she can really feel right now. Still, she thinks, _these_ are the moments when she's almost grateful for this while confusing mess.

Almost.

"I'm sorry about what I said before," Lauren says, looking over at Shane and this time it's his turn to look shocked. "Well… not for _what_ I said cause I stand by _that_. You _don't_ get it. But I didn't need to rip your head off."

He doesn't say anything and _that's_ weird too, but Amy gets it. She's doing the same thing Shane is: waiting. Waiting for Lauren to say more or to say nothing or to flip them both off and run for the bathroom again. They're waiting and holding their breath, anticipating the other shoe to drop. There is, Amy's discovered, _always_ another shoe.

"I'm not gay," Lauren says, finally breaking her silence. "I like boys. A _lot_." Her hands twitch in her lap and Amy recognizes it, spots the signs of panic before it hits and she reaches over, lacing her fingers through Lauren's and smiles when the other girl's hands still in her grasp and Lauren shoots her a tiny smile and that's _something_. "I'm…" She squeezes Amy's hand in her own and lets out a short and shuddering breath. "I'm -"

"Don't," Shane says suddenly, cutting her off and Lauren and Amy's heads both snap up to look at him because they couldn't possibly have heard him _right_. "You didn't want to tell me," he says. "You never planned on it and if you hadn't been high or hungover or… _whatever_ , it never would have come out."

He's not wrong.

Shane walks to the side of the bed and kneels in front of Lauren, his elbows resting on his thighs and he smiles. "You were right," he says (and Amy's pretty sure it's time to check the temperature in Hell.) "About me and about me not getting it. I don't know what it's like to be you." His eyes drift to Amy. "Or _you_. I just know what it's like to be me. To be comfortable in my own skin and with who and what I am. To me… hiding who I am or keeping it from the people I care about…"

There's a flicker of something in his eyes, a moment when the boy kneeling in front of her isn't _Shane Harvey_ , he's just Shane and that look tells Amy more than Shane's words ever have. Somewhere along the way, Amy realizes, _just_ Shane didn't have it as easy as he does now. Somewhere along the way, he _was_ her, sort of, (minus, you know, the faking it and the liking girls and the falling in love with the straight best friend, but all the _rest_ ) and she's pretty sure _Shane_ doesn't really like remembering _just_ Shane.

Even if she's also pretty sure that might be the best part of him.

"I can't imagine something that would hurt more," he says. "Or something that would…" He laughs a little laugh and shakes his head. "People always say coming out and being honest is the bravest thing you can do, that it takes some _serious_ strength." He reaches out and wraps his hand around Amy and Lauren's. "But to live with… whatever it is… alone and to still be… well… _you_ …"

"Did you just compliment me?" Lauren asks and yeah, she smiles when she says it and there's a bit of that old snark dancing along the words, but there's just enough… hope? (Amy doesn't think that's _really_ the word, but it's the best she's got)... behind it that Amy finds herself praying there's enough _just_ Shane still in there that he doesn't fuck it up.

"Don't let it go to your head," Shane says but there's just enough of that flicker of something or other that Amy saw mixed in with his usual Shane twinkle (the one she knows is only going to cause her trouble) that it breaks the tension. "Probably not enough room in there with your ego and whatnot anyway."

"Probably not," Lauren says. Her fingers close over Shane's and Amy suddenly feels like an intruder in her own room. "And if anyone would know about big egos…"

"And deservedly so," Shane says and they all laugh and he grins and Lauren smiles and Amy (finally) breathes.

They're back. And for now? That's enough.

* * *

By the that Sunday afternoon rolls around, Sunday _morning_ has been mostly forgotten (though Amy suspects that 'forgotten' is more code for 'we're not talking about it anymore') (and she's _fine_ with that) and both Shane and Lauren have put aside their 'moment' and refocused on the one thing they don't _mind_ having in common.

 _Her_.

And that, Amy knows, can't end well.

"She needs to tell Karma," Shane says. He's on the kitchen counter, his legs dangling down and his feet in Amy's lap as she paints his toenails.

And yes, that's about as gay as it sounds.

"She needs to tell Karma a lot of things," Lauren says. She's in a chair next to Amy, with the other girl's feet in _her_ lap (and a pair of latex gloves on her hands cause _feet_ ) and she's already halfway through the second coat of polish on Amy's little piggies. "Like to get a life of her own and that being a fake lesbian is like the dumbest plan ever and, most importantly, that secretly dating a man whore is a one way ticket to misery."

Amy pauses, the polish brush hovering over Shane's big toe. "Karma _has_ a life of her own," she says (and the other two both note that _that's_ the part Amy objects to.) "Why else would I be sitting here playing boutique bitches with you two?"

She has something of a point.

"Maybe she does," Lauren says though Amy can tell she doesn't _believe_ it (and she can't blame her.) "But _you_ don't and _you_ do," she says. "Need one, I mean."

Amy stiffens and starts to pull away but Lauren holds her ankle and keeps her in place. "I don't want a life without Karma," Amy says, immediately regretting how needy and sad and fucking _hopeless_ it sounds.

"No one said _without_ Karma," Lauren says. "Just one of your own. One that isn't all _about_ Karma because…" She taps the nail brush against Amy's big toe, struggling to find a way to say it _without_ bashing Karma unnecessarily. "Because unless she had the same epiphany you did when you kissed and is desperately hiding it in her secret fling with Booker? You've finally found something you _can't_ share with her."

Amy says nothing, but she nods, slowly. It's not that the thought hadn't occurred to her before now (it had) (a _lot_ ) and it _definitely_ crossed her _mind_ when Reagan's tongue was crossing her _lips_ (something like that? Karma's the first person she'd tell and she _can't_.) but it's also kinda the hardest part of all of this.

"I have to tell her," Amy says softly because, yeah she _does_.

She just doesn't have the first clue how.

* * *

By the time Sunday afternoon is half over, Karma is apparently raring to get to work on their project, or at least that's what seven phone calls and fourteen text messages would indicate and yeah, Amy knows that's probably got more to do with Liam being out of town for the day (or so Shane tells her) and less to do with actually wanting to do school work, but…

She'll take what she can get.

Amy shows up at the Ashcroft's at the appointed time with laptop, research findings, and Jenny in tow. She decides even before walking through the front door that she won't mention that this is the first time she's touched their _baby_ since Friday.

There's already enough to talk about.

Karma waits all of two seconds before she starts in. "There's my _baby_ ," she cries as Amy walks in and the blonde is momentarily thrown, looking around for who, _exactly_ , they're keeping up the act for. But then she realizes. Karma's talking about the _actual_ (as in fake) (as in doll) (as in not _Amy_ ) baby. Karma plucks Jenny from Amy's arms and coos and cuddles her and Amy worries, for just a minute, that Karma's lost whatever is left of her damn mind.

And then she notices the camera.

"Um… Karms?" Amy nodes in the direction of the webcam hooked to the top of Karma's not nearly new but not old enough to be obsolete (yet) laptop, the tiny red light indicating it's on and recording.

"We're supposed to tape at least one family interaction," Karma whispers, still tickling one finger under her 'daughter's' chin. "Didn't you read the instructions?"

Amy nods like she's just remembered but, apparently she missed that part of the assignment when she was tracking the Box of Doom round the classroom and offering up silent (and unanswered) prayers that it wouldn't land in Karma's lap.

"Did you have fun with Mama?" Karma asks Jenny, cradling the baby in her arms and brushing her very real nose against Jenny's tiny plastic one. "Did she take you for doughnuts _again_?"

Kill me, Amy thinks. Just fucking kill me and be done with it.

"I'm glad you're home," Karma says and it isn't until Amy pulls her eyes from the webcam that she realizes this time Karma _is_ talking to _her_ and is doing so while standing _very_ close and leaning up and oh, _fuck_ , she's going to kiss her.

Twenty-four hours ago, Amy would have been totally down with that.

But it isn't Saturday anymore.

"Me too," Amy says as she deftly sidesteps the kiss and moves into the room, dropping her bag on the kitchen table. She can feel Karma's eyes on her but she's halfway past the point of giving a fuck so she settles down on the edge of a chair. "How was work, dear?" she asks, playing along for the sake of her grade (and maybe sanity.) " Anything new and exciting happen at the office?"

Karma frowns, confusion all over her face and Amy marvels at how someone as adept at bullshit as Karma is, can be so fuck all at improv. Amy nods her head toward the camera and she can just about envision the light bulb going on over her best friend's head.

"No," she says, "nothing new or different. Same old, same old." Karma continues rocking Jenny back and forth in her arms. Amy remembers that there's some sort of sensor in the doll that tracks things like getting rocked (like those little step counting things her mother uses as an excuse for not going to the gym) and realizes it probably won't be much of a secret that she's done a pretty piss poor job of mothering (or is she the dad?) the little tyke.

Karma sits down in the chair next to her, pulling it closer and Amy manages not to scoot away (or closer) and she chalks that up as a moral victory. She looks down at the baby between them and despite it's terrifying little doll face (and seriously, any parent who bought _this_ for their kid should lose custody immediately) and it's empty haunted eyes and the freakishly pale complexion, she has to admit, it's kind of cute.

Or maybe (more likely) it's the way it looks in it's 'mother's' arms that does it for her.

She tries to think of Shane and Lauren (or Reagan) or pretty much _anything_ else but it's a losing battle and, for the first time since the club (so, you know, like thirteen hours or so) Amy finds herself falling right back down the 'in love with your best friend who is impossibly straight' rabbit hole.

Except now, the urge to climb out is almost as strong as the one she has to stay there forever.

Progress, right?

Karma hands her the baby and reaches over to the computer, shutting down the web cam. "I think that's enough family bonding for one afternoon," she says and Amy nods, setting Jenny gently down onto the table. "You want to get to work or…."

"Or?" Amy asks. 'Or' terrifies her. It frightens her just how quickly (and explicitly) her mind goes to places it shouldn't and she wishes she'd managed to talk Lauren or Shane into coming with her cause she's not sure she has the strength for this, for telling Karma, for…

"Dance Moms?"

Karma's holding up a DVD case and a pint of ice cream she had hidden behind the computer, complete with two spoons.

"Or," she says, "we could watch Dance Moms and eat ice cream and forget about babies and boys and lesbians for a few hours?" She smiles at Amy and the blonde feels her heart skip. "I don't know about you," Karma says, "but I kinda miss… us?"

There have been a few moments (more than a _few_ ) since this whole thing started when Amy's thought (briefly) about writing Karma off. About being done with it all and just 'breaking up' with her and letting Liam have her and just disappearing back into the crowd.

But then there are moments like this.

Moments when Amy's reminded that even if she wasn't _in_ love with Karma she'd still _love_ Karma and yeah, she hasn't quite figured out how to reconcile those two yet and she knows she _has_ to tell Karma that but she doesn't know how just yet and she knows it's gonna be a long and ugly and painful process and she's just not _ready_.

She nods and takes a spoon as she follows Karma into the living room, listening as the redhead chatters away about which episodes they're going to watch and does she remember when this happened and oh, her mother asked if Amy was staying for dinner but she doesn't have to cause it's notmeat-loaf night, but she always comes over for Sunday dinner and they haven't gotten to hang out in so long…

"I'll stay," Amy says, settling down onto the couch. "It's Sunday, after all."


	10. Utah

In the end, it really doesn't matter how much Amy fights it or how many times she can't bring herself to do it, to pull the trigger and tell Karma the truth. In the end, doing it isn't a matter of choice. She _has_ to.

But before the end… "You'll know when it's time," Shane tells her (over and over and over so many fucking times she hears it in her sleep.) "You'll know when you're ready."

And _that_ , Amy _does_ know, is just the thing. It may never be time. There may never be a perfect moment when she thinks yes, this is _it_. _This_ is the moment when Karma _won't_ freak, when she _won't_ lose her shit at finding out her best friend is gay (or bi) (or pan) (or _something_ Amy hasn't learned the term for yet, and _that's_ the _other_ thing: how can _Karma_ understand when _she_ doesn't?), when Karma _won't_ pull away or be bugged or be wholly uncomfortable at being loved.

Loved like _that_.

 _God,_ Amy never thought the way she loved Karma might be… _too much_.

"You don't have to rush," Lauren says to her, repeating it day after day after day until her words, her thoughts, her very fucking _voice_ blends together with Shane's and yes, _that's_ as creepy as it sounds. "You've got _time_ ," she says.

Amy knows she has _time_. She's sixteen. She's got days and weeks and years and decades and that's just fucking _great_ except (and there's always an _except_ , isn't there?) every one of those days and every one of those weeks that slips by, she feels less and less and _less_ like her, and more and more and _more_ like a lie.

Five minutes before she kissed Karma, she didn't know _this_ was who she was but now she _does_ and as terrifying as the prospect of telling Karma is?

The thought of keeping it in even one more day is _worse_.

She knows _that_ ' _s_ the thing, the nut, the crux of the _problem_ (and she hates _that_ , she hates thinking of _who_ she is as a fucking _problem_ ). Keeping it in is slowly killing her and even _thinking_ about letting it out (and not just to Karma) (to _anyone_ ) (cause Karma might be first - or _third,_ really - but she won't be _last_ ) seems like a one-way ticket on a bullet train to her own doom. There's a rock and there's a hard place and Amy's already the dirt that's been ground down to nothing under them _both_.

And there's only one way out. There's only one fix for all this, one move she can make that will take this… _thing_ … hanging between her and Karma (and _everyone_ ) (like her mother) (oh, _God,_ her _mother_ ) and make it disappear.

"I've gotta girl the fuck up," she says (to the mirror) (cause the mirror isn't Shane or Lauren so it doesn't talk back) ( _much_.) "I've just gotta do it." She stares into her own eyes and feels a calm and a sense of purpose and a strength she didn't know she had well up inside her. "I'm _going_ to do it."

And she will.

Soon.

Like, you know, when she can take the mirror with her. When she can stare into her own eyes as she speaks to Karma. When that strength she didn't know she had _doesn't_ fizzle and fade and fucking _run for the hills_ the moment the words 'I need to talk to you' bubble up to her lips.

So… soon. Like… tomorrow, maybe. Or the day after. Or next week. Next _month_ , at the _latest_.

But in the end, it really doesn't matter when Amy _plans_ to do it cause in the end?

Utah happens. And she doesn't have a choice.

* * *

Amy's never believed in reincarnation or past lives or what goes around coming around and all that.

The Ashcrofts did ( _do_ ) (she thinks it's still _do_ ) (she hasn't exactly _asked._ ) Molly used to talk about past lives and rebirths and karma (the concept, not the _daughter_ ) all the time. She used to explain how what you did in one life carried over to the next and the next and so on.

"What we do in this life," she said, "echoes in eternity."

And yes, Amy knew she totes stole that from _Gladiator_ but she didn't point it out cause it was a good line and she kinda liked it. A little. Cause even if she didn't _believe_ , it was still nice to think that maybe, since she got Karma in this life, that she must have done some _good_ , some _real_ good, in another.

Or so she thought.

"A serial killer," she says. It's more of a blurt, really, a sudden interruption into the (kinda) comfortable silence between her and Shane and Lauren at the lunch table. Shane's head snaps up and he looks in her direction, more than a little confused, but happy for any interruption of his half eaten burrito and his barely read chem notes.

Lauren, sitting on the other side of Amy, doesn't even flinch. She's heard _this_ before.

"I must have been a serial killer," Amy says. She's got a spoon in hand, dunked halfway into her cup of soup. "Like Bundy or Manson or Dahmer," she says, swirling the spoon in the cup, her eyes… well… her eyes aren't watching her spoon or her soup or either of her friends. Her eyes aren't really looking at _her_ anything.

She's staring across the courtyard, at the row of lockers closest to the tables. She's staring at _Karma (_ like _that's_ new), watching as she leans against one of those lockers, as she bats her eyes and flips her hair and cocks her hips and… _fuck all…_ once upon a time, Amy might have thought of Karma as _hers._ As her best friend, her other half, the yin to her yang, the salt to her pepper, the fucking _soul_ to her _mate_. But _that_ girl… that flirty hair flipping, hip cocking, lip licking, staring up at _him_ (Liam) (like there could be _another_ him) like… _that_..

That isn't _her_ Karma. And really, Amy's not sure she'd want her to be.

And that breaks her heart all over again and just when she'd spent the whole fucking morning dodging Karma (and _him_ ) enough to put it (almost) back together again.

Amy drops her spoon and Lauren does take notice of _that_ , cause - in her experience - there aren't many things that can kill the other girl's appetite. Though, she supposes, watching Liam lean over Karm, his hand pressed against the locker behind her, just might do it.

The spoon splashes a bit of soup (tomato) (the only soup worth eating) out of the cup and across Amy's hand and it's _hot_ but she barely even feels it. She's too busy feeling _him_ , the way his hand keeps creeping closer and closer and closer still, the way she can feel the tiny bit of air between him and Karma slipping away, she can feel the _heat_ (not soup hot) (not the _good_ hot) (though, she guesses, Karma might think different) as his fingers finally graze the bare skin of Karma's shoulder (and who told her that wearing _that_ top, with it's cut out shoulders and it's bare midriff and it's so much… _exposed…_ was even a _little_ OK?)

"No," she says ( _breathes_ ) (and she's not the tiniest bit sure if she's talking to herself or to _him_ and his touching tickling caressing fingers that she swears - fucking _swears_ \- she can feel on her own skin) and she pushes her tray away, tipping the cup and spilling soup across the table, dripping blood red onto Shane's notes.

He snatches the papers away and Lauren's already in motion, piling napkins on the spill and slipping quickly from her seat and around to the other side of the table, putting herself between Amy and… _them_ … (and the thought that _they're_ a _them_ … that just makes Amy wonder how many _more_ pieces her heart can end up in.)

"Amy," Lauren says, snapping her fingers in the taller blonde's face. "Amy, look. Look at _me_."

But Amy doesn't, Amy _can't_. Because this… _this_ is her karma (the concept, again) (not the girl) (cause not _her_ Karma) (already established _that_.) This is her punishment, if not for lying (or for lying _about_ lying) then for something else. Something worse. Because she _wants_ to stop looking, she _needs_ to stop looking but she _can't_ , not even with Lauren in the way, and this is how Amy knows how bad she _must_ have been.

Knowing the person you're in love with is in love with someone else (or, at the very least, _wants_ to be) ( _desperately_ ) (almost as desperately as you want to _not_ be in love with them)? That's hell, that's like Dante's fucking Inferno, that's like a thousand drops of hot tomato soup spilling over your flesh and there's not enough napkins in the fucking _universe_.

That's _knowing_. But Amy doesn't just know, she doesn't just have to spend every day living with the _knowledge_. She has to _watch_ , she has to see it happen, she has to sit by and take it all in as Karma falls further and further and faster and faster every fucking _day_ and _that_ is some kind of next level shit, some kind of special hell, a circle so deep and so dark that even the writers and the painters and all the 'arteests' wouldn't dare go _there_. It's a secret hell even if there's nothing all that _secret_ about it. It's a country song, it's a your OTP never even gets a chance before the show gets cancelled hell, it's a too fucking _angsty_ to stop reading fanfic hell.

The Adele wrote a song about it and you can't stop listening to it on repeat over and over and _over_ again hell.

"This is past _bad_ ," Amy says ( _whispers_ ) and it _is_. It always has been, ever since the moment they kissed and it's only getting further and further and further _past_ it every day. "This…" she says ( _stammers_ ) waving a hand in the general direction of Liam and Karma and the rest of the Hester world, in the direction of everyone they're lying to..

And _that's_ it. There's the extra, there's the special, there's the thing that takes it just _too far_.

Because _this_ isn't just tears pricking the back of her eyes, this isn't _just_ watching or knowing or living with Karma and… _him_. This is the unwavering certainty that every _other_ set of eyes there isn't watching _them_ cause they're all watching _her_ , all of them knowing, all of them seeing what's so fucking obvious and every last one of them knowing exactly how _she_ feels.

And how Karma _doesn't_.

Except that's not _exactly_ true. It isn't how Karma doesn't cause, really, she _does_ … jst _not_ for Amy. Karma _does_ but it's just for _him_ , and Amy can't blame her or hate her for that, no matter how she tries and how she wishes. Karma can't help her feelings any more than Amy can and she knows that, but knowing it doesn't _help_. Cause knowing it is _still_ watching it (or imagining cause Lauren's in the way.)

It's seeing it, over and over and _over_ again in her mind, watching _his_ hand slowly sliding up and down the bare skin of Karma's arm, _him_ leaning into her, smiling at her in that way he's got no fucking right to (except he _does_ ) (cause Karmy's not _real_ ), right out there, right in front of the whole fucking _world_ , _him_ being with her in a way Amy knows she never will and everyone sees it and they're pitying her or laughing at her or wondering how she can be so fucking blind.

Sometimes (like right now) ( _so_ right now) Amy wishes she was.

"This is past serial killer," Amy says. Lauren sits down across from her, one hand still blotting at the soup and the other reaching out, covering Amy's hand with her own but Amy pulls away, like she's been scalded. She shakes her head, resisting the contact, the _comfort._ She doesn't deserve _that_ , not after what she must have done (and what she is _doing_.) "This is like… mass murder shit… like Stalin," she says. "Or Mussolini or -"

"President Snow," Karma offers as she just… _appears_ … dropping into the seat next to Lauren and _her_ hand immediately slips over Amy's and this time the blonde doesn't pull away because this time it _isn't_ comfort. Karma's touch might have been that, once upon a time, but now…

Now it's an act, a play. It's a show and Karma's got her role and she's got it down fucking _pat_ and Amy doesn't care what drama club thinks, the girl deserves an Oscar and yeah, Amy thinks, _this_ is what _she_ deserves/

The act. The play. Having everything she wants but not having it _at all_.

"Yeah," Amy says, her voice and her smile dueling to see which can be the weakest and her eyes fix on Karma's hand, on the way the redhead's fingers gently stroke against her skin, the sort of thing a _couple_ would do, a tiny bit of habitual intimacy that you just fall into when you love someone, the way you unconsciously strive to remind them of _that_ at every opportunity.

It's the sort of thing Amy's always known Karma would be good at, the sort of thing she's always known her best friend has dreamed of. Sure, there's sex and there's kissing and there's everything in between, but what Karma's always dreamed of, what she's always _needed_ like most people need air, is _that_. The simple things, the tiny moments, the littlest reminders that she belongs to someone and someone belongs to her.

Amy never imagined she'd be that _someone_ , or that she'd even _want_ to be, which is probably why she never once imagined that _not_ being that someone?

Special hell. Special fucking _hell_.

* * *

It's Lauren who finds her and _that's_ a kindness, really, because any other day (any other day _before_ Liam Booker realized she was alive) there would have been no way Amy could have bolted from the lunch table the way she did without Karma hot on her heels.

So, yeah, a kindness. And a little bit more hell too. Best of both fucking worlds.

Lauren leans against the stall door and doesn't say a word, which is just fine with Amy. She's perfectly happy (happy being a _relative_ term) with the other girl just shooting 'get the fuck out' glares at everyone who comes in (and none of them are you know who) (and that makes it better _and_ worse and _God,_ will anything ever just be _one_ thing again?) and occasionally offering Amy a sip from her water bottle in between the sobs.

"You can say it, you know," Amy hiccups out as she pulls blindly at the toilet paper, tearing sheets free to dab at her eyes, but it's kinda pointless, a bit like tossing a sponge in the Pacific.

"Say what?" Lauren asks. Her voice is soft and kind and nothing like the girl who tried to out them as frauds in front of the school and _that_ should make Amy feel better, right? It should make her feel like she's found something, like she's gained a friend, or a _sister_ , and that should make this all at least a tiny tiny bit better. And it does.

But it's kinda like the scales in biology class, with rocks on one side and a feather on the other and there's just no fucking way it will ever balance and Amy hates even more that she can't just have one thing that makes her even sort of happy.

Or something close.

She'd _so_ take something close.

"You can tell me how stupid I am," Amy says. "How ridiculous I am to let her do this to me. How fucking pathetic I am."

"You're not pathetic," Lauren says, even if she knows that falls on deaf ears, but she knows a thing or two about that sense of self hatred, about that urge to beat yourself up - before someone else does it for you - about the need for it to be _you._

Cause if it isn't you, it's them and you _love_ them and they're perfect and wonderful and sunflowers and fucking sunshine and they can't be _wrong_.

"What the hell else would you call it?" Amy asks. " _I let_ this happen. _I_ could stop it. _I_ could do the right thing for _me_ but instead I do the right thing for _her_ and… and… and…"

Amy's body shakes and her hands ball into fists on her thighs and she keeps pounding and pounding and pounding against her legs until Lauren drops the bottle and slips into the stall and catches Amy's fists in her hands.

"Then why?" she asks, her thumbs ghosting across Amy's knuckles, trying to calm, trying to soothe. "If _this_ is what it's doing, why do _you_ keep doing it?"

There are so many obvious answers. Fear. Pain. The terror of the _possibility_ of telling your biggest secret and having to literally _watch_ someone leaving you without even if they don't actually _move_ , even if they stand there and say it's _OK_ and they _understand_ and they're _fine with it_ and you want to believe them, you _so_ fucking do.

But you know better.

It's the chance of heartbreak, the way your life will change in an instant and it can never go back.

So many obvious answers that Lauren never even thinks of the _most_ obvious of them all. .

"Because it's the only way," Amy says, her shoulders shaking with every word. "It's the only way _I_ get to have her. It's the only way she'll ever be mine."

And _that_ is somehow still worth it - _all_ of it - to Amy. And she thinks ( _worries_ ) (fears) ( _panics_ ) that it always will be.

It won't.

* * *

Karma talks to Amy four more times that day and doesn't once ask her what happened at lunch and Amy tries, she tries so fucking hard to focus on _that_ , to spend the afternoon dwelling on the way her best friend isn't even being _that_ anymore. She tries to focus and tries to stay mad because…

"Mad is better," she says to Lauren on the way home. "Mad isn't hurting or… it's not _just_ hurting and if I'm ever gonna end this... _that's_ what I've gotta do. Get mad. Blame her."

Lauren says nothing, her eyes focused on the road, even if all they _see_ is Amy in that stall with her fists and her tears and her shaking…

 _This_ is why Lauren never cares.

"It's all _her_ fault anyway," Amy says, pausing just long enough for Lauren or Shane to chime in, to argue with her, but if she's expecting _either_ of them to disagree, then, _clearly_ , she hasn't been paying attention. "She's the one who wanted to fake it," Amy says. "And who does _that_? Who lies about their sexuality to be _popular_?"

Lauren sees Shane in the backseat, about to speak ( _Well, you did, Amy_ ) and she glares at him in the rearview and as terrifying as Lauren usually is?

Only seeing her eyes is about a thousand times _worse_.

Shane doesn't say a word.

"And she's only keeping it up for _him_ ," Amy says, obviously on a roll. "The whole couple act, it's just so she can keep _his_ attention. Like it's perfectly normal and OK for someone to want you _only_ because you're taken."

Amy drums her fingers along the armrest and Lauren counts it down in her head. 3...2...1…

"Not that she's _really_ taken," Amy says. "But _he_ doesn't know that." She spins in her seat, fixing Shane with a glare. "He _doesn't_ know that, right?"

Shane shakes his head. "Liam knows what Karma's told him," he says.

"Her _lies_ ," Amy mutters, turning her eyes back to the road. " _That's_ what he knows. _Her_ lies."

Except, Amy knows, they're not _just_ her lies. They're _theirs_. Hers _and_ Karma's and _that's_ what they have between them now, that's what ten years of friendship - of _family_ _-_ has become. The lies they tell everyone else.

And the ones they tell each other.

Except… _those_? They're not _theirs._ Those are all Amy's.

And those? They're the ones doing all the damage.

* * *

It's a Saturday. A Saturday day and a Saturday _night_ and Liam's busy doing something Booker-esque and Lauren's gone to see family in Dallas and Shane's got a date and so Karma's got no distractions and Amy's got no excuses.

"We'll work on the project," Karma says. "We're _so_ far behind and I know that's _totally_ my fault and I'm sorry I've been so… _busy_ … it's just that Li -"

"It's fine," Amy says, cutting her off, grateful Karma can't _see_ her over the phone. "I'll come over after dinner," she says.

"Dinner?" Karma asks. "I mean, it's only ten thirty now. You could come over and we could, you know, make a day of it. A little work, a little talk, a little Netflix… a little _us_."

A little work. On a project that just perpetuates the lie. A little talk. Like it would take more than five minutes for _him_ to come up. A little Netflix. Well...

Amy can't really argue with that one.

A little _us_.

She can _so_ argue with _that_.

"I've got some other… _stuff_ to do," she says (lies.) "And my mom actually asked for some help with wedding things and I know it's just cause Lauren's not here but…"

"Say no more," Karma says. "I know it's been killing you, seeing them so close," she says and Amy tries really, _really_ hard to not think of who that _really_ applies to. "After dinner is fine. We can pull an all nighter and you can sleep over and we can roll out of bed at like noon tomorrow and it'll be _great_."

It _sounds_ great. It _sounds_ like exactly what Amy needs. It sounds _perfect_. And, truthfully, if it weren't for Utah?

It might have been.

She and Karma don't get to the little work until after midnight and they manage, for the most part, to avoid the talking ( _he_ only comes up twice and, for once, Karma's perceptive enough to notice the look in Amy's eyes and she changes the subject) (quickly) and there's a little, or _a lot_ of Netflix, a good half a season of _House Hunters_ and there's doughnuts and enough soda to keep them both up half the night and when they finally do get to the work, Amy thinks she's ready, she thinks she can handle it, she thinks…

She thinks she can make it through one more night _without_ telling Karma.

They start with the research basics, finding the facts and the figures and the data on same sex parenting. Karma finds numbers on adoptions by state and Amy finds a chart detailing the number of couples that have their own biological children. Karma digs up a study on the mental health of children raised in same sex households ( _good_ , in case you were wondering) and Amy finds three different testimonials from badass football players with two dads and one from a heterosexual as it gets mother of six who was raised by two moms.

They've got pie charts and bar graphs and anecdotal evidence and even a ten minute YouTube video. There's a half a dozen blogs from children of same sex parents and at least as many tumblr sites and six different TV interviews.

And then there's Utah.

Karma's the one who finds it and, in some ways, that actually makes it _worse_. "Will you look at this?" she asks, staring at her laptop screen. There's anger dancing in her eyes, the kind Amy's used to seeing when Zen has done something Golden Boy-ish or when Karma found out _The Hills_ was all staged. "This," she says, "is just fucking _wrong_."

She swivels the laptop so Amy can see and the headline nearly jumps across the room.

 _Utah Judge Removes Lesbian Couple's Foster Child_

Amy can only see those seven words, she can't see the details of the story, she doesn't know all the facts (as if those would _help_ ) but she already feels something… _different_. It's not the last piece of the puzzle falling into place, it's nothing quite that… _perfect_. But maybe… maybe it's the last _edge_ piece, maybe it's the border being finished, the outline of the thing (of _her_ ) coming together, the cradle that will hold everything else in place.

She takes the computer from Karma and sets it on her lap to read the article. She reads about the judge, some conservative old white fucker (such a _shock_.) She reads how he removed the child from the couple, how he took _their daughter_ away because, he said, it was in the best interests of the child. Because, he said, it's been proven that straight couples make better parents, that _they_ have healthier and more well adjusted children, that _they_ raise more productive members of society.

Because, he said, he's a close minded bigot who only approves of lesbians when they're on the Internet or those old VHS tapes he keeps in the bottom drawer of his desk.

And _yeah_ , he didn't _really_ say that last part, but Amy knows how to read between the lines.

Somewhere in the background (though it may as well be a thousand miles away), Amy hears Karma ranting, hears her spewing some serious righteous indignation at the affront to these two women.

"It's just fucking wrong," she says (again.) "I thought love was love and the child was what mattered," she says (yells.) "He can't just… _do that_."

Except he _can_. And he _did_.

Five minutes before she kissed Karma, Amy _still_ would've thought this was wrong.

But this isn't five minutes _before_. This is _now_ and this is… this _could be_ _her_. Someday. Maybe.

And for the first time, Amy kinda feels like _maybe_ is enough.

"It's insane," Karma says. "It's insane and it's wrong and… _ugh_." She slaps a hand down on her desk and pushes back in her chair. "It isn't fair," she says and Amy might ( _would_ ) agree, if she were really listening.

If she weren't starting at the picture with the article. If she weren't staring at the two women, holding their daughter ( _their_ daughter) outside a courtroom. If she weren't staring at the tears streaming down the little girl's face and the ones brimming and threatening to spill over from her mothers' eyes.

"I just don't… _understand_ ," Karma snaps and Amy hears _that_ (and yes, she notes the fucking irony of it, too.) "How can… people are just so… _fuck_." She stands up and paces across the room, trying to work off some of the angry (and soda) (and sugar) energy. "What's the point of this whole stupid project?" she asks. "It's not even fucking reality, not if we'd never even get to have a kid because of assholes like that."

" _We_ wouldn't," Amy says and she doesn't even realize she's talking until she hears her own voice and by then… well… by then the words are out and there's no taking them back. Not that she'd have to, not that they say much of _anything_ , not that they tell _Karma_ a single fucking thing.

But maybe she's not the one they're for.

"What?" Karma asks, stopping in mid-pace to look over at her best friend. "I _know_ that, Amy," she says, a not very subtle undercurrent of _duh_ rippling through her voice. "I know it wouldn't really affect _us_. But it's solidarity, you know? Like my mom joining PFLAG and allies and all that. One for all and all for -"

"No," Amy says, stopping Karma cold. "Not all for one and not one for all." Her eyes still haven't left the screen, they still haven't moved from the little girl's teary face and, in the end, she'll always think it was _her_ that did it. _Her_ that broke the dam that Amy had been slowly and carefully building and tending to since that moment in the gym.

Since 'woah' and 'I know' and that realization a split second later that Karma _didn't_ know.

And the realization right now that she still doesn't.

Karma scoots across the room and kneels in front of Amy, putting a hand on her arm. They've been best friends - fucking _family_ \- for so long that she knows when something's wrong (even when she doesn't have the tiniest clue what that something is) but the look in Amy's eyes when they finally come free of the screen, when Amy looks at _her_ …

It's enough. Enough for Karma to realize that maybe something's been a lot wronger for a lot longer than she thought. And that she missed it?

Karma doesn't know what to do with _that._

"Look, Amy, I know we're not really lesbians, OK?" she says, ignoring the way Amy's eyes darken as she speaks. "And I know we've got… privilege… and all, and that nothing like this would ever happen to _us_ , but -"

"You," Amy says, and there's those words again, slipping loose before she even knows she's thinking them. "It would never happen to _you_."

And there it is. Just like that. No giant build up and no fanfare and no stammering and stuttering 'I need to tell you something' and no hemming and hawing 'I know this might be hard to hear' and definitely no 'I have these feelings' cause, in the end, Amy finally figures it out.

It isn't about Karma.

Though, from the look on Karma's face, Amy's not so sure _she_ gets that.

"What?" Karma asks and the hand on Amy's arm doesn't _leave_ , she doesn't pull _away_ , but her grip loosens (just a bit) (a _tiny_ bit) (just _enough_ ) and it's there, Amy can see it in her eyes, that Karma understands - that she's starting to - but the other... _thing..._ is there too, the 'I understand but I don't think I _want_ to cause… no… cause… change… cause… _fuck_ ' thing.

Amy knows _that_ thing. She's seen it in the mirror enough.

She looks back down at the screen, her her heart breaking all over again and Amy realizes that yeah, this _is_ the moment and Shane _was_ right, she does know when it's time but not because she's found the perfect moment or because she finally suspects that maybe Karma _does_ have feelings (that… _thing_ … pretty much kills that) but because that picture and that article and those women and their ( _their_ ) daughter…

It makes it all so clear.

This heartache and this loss and this… special hell… that she's been living in? All about losing the girl she never had? It sucks. It sucks out fucking loud and it's _real_ and it's _pain_ and she hates every fucking second of it.

But it's _easy_. It hurts like nothing Amy's ever known, but it's _easy_ compared to… compared to what might be. What might be out there, what might be waiting for her. Compared to the world outside Hester and Austin and her tiny little Shane and Lauren and (maybe) Karma bubble, this might be as easy it ever gets for her.

And _that's_ what does it.

"These women, Karma," she says. "They're _suffering_. Real suffering, real pain. They're not missing out on a _boy_ because he doesn't notice them and they're not _not popular_ because people in high school are fucking blind and stupid."

"Amy -"

Amy shakes her head and Karma grows silent again. "They… _dared_. They dared to say who they were and to claim it and to… _want_ it and to want _her_ ," Amy jabs a finger at the screen, at the tiny girl whose name she doesn't even know. "And now, because of _that_? They're in pain, they're in _hell._ They're going through _that_ and you're _faking_ and I'm…"

She trails off and she can feel the words - like those ones that slipped free all on their fucking own just a minute ago - _right there_ and she's _so close_ and she feels like they're caught in her throat, trapped (suffocating) in the air as she breathes and if she can just push them out, if she can just _breathe_ them into life, if she can just…

But she _can't_. She can't say it and she can't _not_ and she can't breathe and she can't stand and she can't move and she just can't…

"I can't be here," she says, the words coming in a rush and Amy can _feel_ her lungs expanding and contracting and every one is a labor, every one is concentration, forcing and pushing and driving the breaths through her body.

She pushes herself off the floor, Karma's laptop tumbling to the ground as Amy snatches up her own computer and her books and (almost) Jenny, clutching them all to her chest as she bolts for the door.

"Amy!" Karma yells, freezing her at the door.

She looks back and she can see it all in Karma's eyes - the eyes she knows maybe even better than her own - and it fucking _kills_ her. It's all there, the way it's been in the mirror for weeks. The understanding and the denial, the truth and the faking and she can see that… _desperation_ there, swimming in the tears. The last desperate hope that everything hasn't _changed_ and that _Amy_ hasn't been going through something and she _missed_ it and that the entire fucking world hasn't just tipped upside down.

"We…" Karma says. She blinks and her breath is short and it's everything Amy can do not to run across the room and hold her. "We were _faking_."

Amy hears it. The question in Karma's words and this isn't how she wanted to do it, it's not even _close_ , but this hasn't been about what _she's_ wanted in a very long time.

"No, Karma," she says. " _You_ were."

And the door shuts quietly behind her as she goes.


	11. The End of the World as She Knows It

**Remember what Amy did after she came out to Karma on the show? Yeah, she doesn't do that, but she does have an unexpected encounter…**

So this, Amy thinks, is how her world ends. Not with a bang or a whimper or a ridiculously loud fight in the Hester cafeteria where she accidentally outs her and Karma both, but with a softly shutting bedroom door and a slow walk down the stairs and out the Ashcroft's front door.

And make no mistake, it _is_ a _walk_ \- slow and deliberate, eyes watching one foot in front of the other and then repeat - and Amy's _proud_ of that. She doesn't know for _sure_ why she's walking and not running. Maybe, she thinks, it's because - in so many ways - _that's_ what she's been doing for weeks, running. Running from Karma and running from herself and running from the moment she didn't even know would happen, the moment when some child she's never met broke her walls and sent everything she thought she knew crashing down around her.

Or, maybe, probably, _unfortunately_ , it's because she thinks that the slower she goes, the longer it takes, the better the chance that Karma will come barreling out of her room and charging down the stairs and catch her just as she's about to walk out the door, spinning her around and kissing her - _hard_ and _long_ and _real_ \- before confessing that she wasn't faking it either.

That's the dream, right?

Amy nods, totally to _herself_ , cause yeah, It _was_ the dream, it's _been_ the dream, for as long as Amy's been thinking about being gay she's been thinking about Karma being gay _too_ and how perfect and romantic and fairytale it would be and yeah, that's _usually_ Karma's thing, but a girl - even a sarcastic, cynical, glass is half-empty and will never be filled _again_ girl - can still dream.

And that was definitely the dream.

But as Amy steps out of the Ashcroft's door and onto the driveway and the cool night air and the hundreds of stars and the absolutely no one else around reminds her that it's the middle of the fucking night and she _walked_ here?

She knows the truth.

It was the dream. But she's wide awake now.

* * *

So, yeah, maybe she didn't plan this as well as she should have.

Like, you know, _at all_.

There ought to be a handbook, Amy thinks. A step-by-step guide to what one should do when one outs oneself to one's best friend / fake girlfriend / unrequited love and then has to flee - via a very evenly paced and not rushing at all walk - at… at… at…

(she tugs her phone from her pocket, exceptionally glad for it's freakishly good battery life as the light from the screen breaks up the dark all around her)

Two-forty-five. AM.

Yeah. A guide. Definitely a guide.

Amy slips her phone - without one missed call or a single text or tweet or Facebook or snap or even a fucking _email_ \- back into her pocket and she manages to leave it there for almost five minutes (this time) before pulling it back out and flicking her thumb across the screen - and still _nothing_ \- and she swears ( _this_ time) she's not looking again.

Until she does.

She's been walking for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, in the general direction of her house but on the side streets and the back streets and all the streets someone (Karma) would never think to go down, where she'd actually have to _look_ , and if her walk out of the Ashcroft's was slow and deliberate, this is more like slow and…

Well…

 _Slow_.

And not all that deliberate - like _at all_ \- and certainly not all that enthused and definitely not in any rush and that probably explains why she hasn't called Lauren or Shane for a ride even though Amy knows either or both of them would be there in a heartbeat. But they'd come with questions and Amy knows they would both _try_ \- Lauren probably harder than Shane - to just be patient with her and let her tell them in her own time.

As long as that time was _by_ the time they got her home. Lauren would probably at least let her get in the house but Amy's pretty sure Shane wouldn't even let her out of the car until she spilled. And, frankly? Amy thinks she's had just about enough spilling for one night.

 _No, Karma._ You _were._

Yeah, maybe enough spilling for a lifetime or two or maybe three if, you know, Molly's right and everyone does come back after they die and Amy has to admit, much to her surprise, that she didn't get to find out about _that_ \- death - tonight, though she'd been so sure that the moment she finally told Karma she was going to up and kick right fucking there.

She's kinda glad she didn't though - die, she means - even if she thought she would. But she _didn't_ and she's surprisingly (at least to _her_ ) OK with that though she could do with a little less of the pain (and fear) (and nausea) (and fear) (and confusion) (and did she mention _fear?_ ) rolling through her right now.

She'd thought telling Karma the truth would put an end to all _that_ , but it seems to have only made it _worse_. And Amy doesn't get that, like at all. She had been so sure it was the secret - the having it and the keeping it and the keeping it from _Karma -_ that had been eating away at her and slowly driving her mad. But now it's not a secret anymore even if not _everyone_ knows yet, except - when she really thinks about it - they _all_ do, cause school and Farrah and Bruce and anyone who saw her mother's report from fucking Homecoming and yeah, maybe they don't know _all_ the truth but they know the _important_ part and now?

So does Karma.

Amy stops dead in the street as _that_ thought washes over her and she _lets_ it, she lets the waves of it crash all around her, soaking her in the tide and, with every passing second, it's like she's experiencing it all over again. That feeling of relief and release as she finally let it all out and that _right after_ feeling, the one that sunk its hooks into her as she shut that door and she tried so hard to push it away, tried so hard to not think _that_.

That it might be the last time. The last time she was in that room and shut that door and walked out of that house. It might be the last time. _Their_ last time. Because Karma knows. Karma _knows_. _Karma_ knows.

 _Fuck_.

Karma knows.

Amy sits down - she _has_ to - on the curb, and it's less of a sit and more of a fall, but not quite a collapse and _that's_ something, though if she's being honest? She's getting fucking sick of 'somethings', of seeking and searching and desperately trying to find the thing to hang onto, to cling to, the thing that doesn't make it _better_ , but makes it suck _less_.

Less isn't what she wants but it's all she's got and as she rests her head between her knees and focuses, as best she can, on breathing, Amy wonders if she'll ever 'got' any more than that, if it, as they all say, really does get better.

It has to, right? It _has_ to.

It has to.

* * *

Amy clutches her head in her hands and concentrates on her breaths. On taking one in and pushing one out and counting them off in her head. One. Two. Three. And every time, for five solid minutes, she loses track and breath and her fucking _mind_ at three. Every _single_ time.

At one, she sees Karma and that look, that 'I get it but I don't know if I _want_ it' look as she figured it out. Amy's glad she wasn't looking at Karma when she said… _it_ … because she's not sure if she could have taken _that_. She's not sure if she could have handled _watching_ their friendship - at least the way it's _always_ been - die right in front of her.

Dying at her hand.

At one and a half (and _yes_ , she's counting _halves_ cause… she _is_ ) she sees her phone and its blank screen and she sees the empty street, without a car or a… truck… driving along slowly, without anyone peering out from behind a wheel or a passenger side window, without anyone making slow, wide turns, headlights sweeping across the streets and the sidewalks and the yards as they hunt and they search and they call out her name, desperate to find her in the dark.

But the streets are empty and the night is silent and she's alone and every time _that_ hits - at one and three-quarters - Amy has to fight and she has to punch and push and force herself to keep going, to make it to _two_.

And then, every time she _does?_ She wishes she hadn't. Cause two… two is worse. Two is hell. Two is Karma but it's not _just_ Karma. It's Karma _after_. It's Karma when it's sunk in and she knows _exactly_ what Amy said (and even what she so carefully _didn't_ ) and it's not _just_ Karma but it's Karma _and_ Liam.

At two, Amy sees them together, in the hall and then in the quad and then in the backseat of Liam's car and then, finally, as she exhales a shuddering 'two' into the dark, she sees them in a room that she assumes is his, but she doesn't _know_ (yes, she does) cause she's never seen his room and she never plans to. But Amy pays the room no mind and she pays _him_ no mind cause all she can _really_ see is Karma in tears and Karma in pain and she knows - Amy _knows_ \- that it's all because of her.

And at two and a quarter, Amy knows. She knows why Karma's not out here, why she's not on the street or on her phone or on her social media stalking her across the Internet. She's gone to _him_. Karma's gone to him and not to her, she's run _to_ him instead of _after_ her and she's letting him hold her instead of prowling the streets and she's letting him comfort her instead of blowing up Amy's phone and she's… she's...

She's lost.

Karma is lost to her and when Amy realizes that, when she _feels_ it in every single fucking 'three' she manages to somehow push out, that's when she cracks. The tears come and her heart wobbles wildly in her chest and she clutches at the curb and she wonders if she only survived Karma's room, if she only made it through telling her just so she could die out here, where at least she could do it alone.

Which is, of course, why after the last 'three', he pulls up. A knight in shining fuckboy armor atop his 'I've got money and you don't and let me show it off and remind you' silvery steed and he's hopping out from behind the wheel and just looking at her, not saying a fucking word but she knows he knows and yeah, she's not dead.

But this is _definitely_ hell.

* * *

Amy's got no idea why she gets in the car. Maybe it's cause it's cold outside or cause it's damn near three in the morning and dark and she's alone or maybe it's cause she's already made a mess of Biblical proportions out of the night and she may as well finish it off.

Or maybe it's just because _he's_ there and Karma's not and at least this way she'll know that they're not together.

Small victories and all.

She doesn't know, for sure, why she gets in and she _really_ doesn't know why she just shrugs and stares out the window when Liam asks where he can take her. She could have ( _should_ have) said home or Shane's or a bar or maybe the airport so she could hop a flight to somewhere, _anywhere_ (she hears Brazil is lovely this time of year) or even back to Karma's.

OK, maybe not _there_. And probably not back to his place or a hotel or the art room or wherever it is he takes all the other girls he picks up on the side of the road (cause you _know_ he _does_ ) or at the bar or at the parties or any of the other long list of places she just _knows_ he frequents in his never ending hunt for more conquests.

Like, you know, again, _Karma's_ house.

And _that_ thought makes her want to punch him, to bust her knuckles bloody right across his face but he's, you know, _driving_ , and that would probably be a bad idea and it isn't like Karma's just some girl that _he_ duped and charmed and lied to just to have his way with her.

It's kinda the other way around, it's kinda Karma (with _her_ help) making _him_ believe that she's something she's not, it's kinda Karma (and _her_ ) playing right into his apparent girls who like girls fetish and Amy wonders, for just a moment, if _that's_ why he picked her up, if _that's_ why he's playing the hero.

Any lesbian in a storm, right?

And _that_ would make this night complete though, wouldn't it? Her and Liam Booker crashing at his place and he could ply her with drinks and charm (which Karma _swears_ he has, if 'you'd just give him a chance') and then he'd give her those eyes - she knows the ones, she's gay and has good taste but she's not _blind_ \- and she'd tell him the truth.

"Karma's been faking it all along," she could say. "She's just been _saying_ she's a lesbian to make you want her, but I'm the _real gay deal_ and _that's_ your _thing_ , right?"

And he'd get hot and bothered and angry and drunk and she'd get… drunk… and then they could…

No.

Just... _no_.

Amy could be as straight as a fucking arrow _and_ as heartbroken and devastated as… well… as _her_ … _and_ as drunk as drunk could be and still…

No.

Sleeping with Liam would be the dumbest thing _ever,_ like OMG PLOT TWIST (that makes no sense) and it would, basically, make everything she's gone through the last few weeks utterly pointless. None of this has been about liking _boys_ , that hasn't been the point _at all_ and maybe she doesn't know if she likes boys or even what that would make her if she does but Amy knows that even if she _does_ like them, she doesn't like _him_ and yeah, he's _objectively_ good looking and all, but she's not some sort of… sexual Hulk that just loses control around the hotness and can't control herself.

Plus - and _far_ more importantly - it would _kill_ Karma and though Amy's mighty hurt and definitely confused and totally crushed that Karma hasn't come looking for her?

She'd never do _that_. Not to Karma.

And not to herself.

"You hungry?"

Her eyes flick from the window over to Liam, expecting him to be staring at her like… like… well… like she _imagines_ boys like him (or any boy, really) stare at girls. With _those_ eyes and _that_ smirk and that supposedly smoldering and soulful look that says 'yeah', and he just expects that to _work_ (cause it usually _does_ ) and she'll be like all the rest, all the other girls he's dazzled with a street corner rescue and his fancy car and his gentlemanly ways and the promise of food.

(Not that she isn't hungry.) (She's outed herself and she's cried and she's accepted a ride from _him_ , but she's still _Amy_.)

But he isn't looking at her like that. In fact, he isn't looking at her _at all._ He's staring out the window, his hands at ten and two on the wheel and he's yawning a _fucker_ of a yawn - like the giant gaping tentacled pit from Star Wars opening to swallow them all whole kinda thing - and she's pretty sure his stomach just made the least sexy sound she's ever heard and, for just a second, Amy actually considers that he might be… you know… _human_.

Nah.

"I could eat," she says, with a noncommittal shrug (and why does she keep doing _that?_ ) and Liam nods and mumbles something that sounds like 'cool' through the end of the yawn.

"I know a place," he says cause _of course_ he does and Amy's sure - fucking _positive_ \- that place is going to be his house, followed by his room and then his bed and she spends the next ten minutes trying to decide whether she'll kick him in the balls or punch him in the face (she settles on _both_ but she's not sure what order and decides to make _that_ call in the moment.)

So she's a bit surprised - more than a _bit_ , really - when he pulls the car into the lot of an all night diner just the other side of Hester. It's tiny and it's a bit run down and "It doesn't look like much, I know," he says. "But the pancakes… oh my _God_." He glances over at her, a sudden look of concern on his face. "You like pancakes, right? I mean, _everyone_ likes pancakes but… you _do_ like pancakes? I mean, they've got other stuff and I'm pretty sure most of it is, you know, nut free and all but if you wanted to go somewhere -"

He's being nice. And thoughtful. And almost… _fuck_ … sweet. And _that_ is just a little bit - or a _lot_ bit, really - more than Amy can handle just this minute so she mutters at him that pancakes are _fine_ (cause _pancakes_ ) and she gets out ( _jumps_ ) from the car and starts walking in without him, hoping he didn't see the tears and how fucking _wrong_ is _that_ , that she's even _remotely_ worried about what Liam fucking Booker saw?

But at least if this _is_ how her world ends? It'll do it with pancakes.


	12. Hunger Pains

**Sorry this took so long. Anyone still out there reading?**

Liam Booker likes pancakes.

Correction. Liam Booker _likes_ pancakes. Like Amy likes doughnuts or, sometimes, shrimp. Or, you know, pancakes. Or, you know, food in general, baked good especially, but _that_ is so _not_ the point. The point, in case you missed it?

Liam Booker _likes_ pancakes.

He's been discussing them for the last ten minutes, talking about them in the most animated of ways. It reminds Amy - sort of painfully - of how Karma gets rolling when she's talking about a plan, the way her eyes light up at the possibilities, the way she can't slow down and every word seems to be racing to beat the one behind it out of her mouth.

On Karma it's adorable with a side of frustrating along with a dash of 'this is going to end so badly'. On Liam…

On _him_ (and that's how Amy keeps thinking of him, as _him_ ) it might be the most human and normal and sort of likeable - in an 'I hate you and all that you stand for and your misogynistic and chauvinistic ways but you at least have decent taste in food' kinda way - thing about him.

And even if it wasn't three in the morning and she hadn't just outed herself to her _girlfriend_ and she wasn't sitting in a booth across from said girlfriend's secret _boyfriend_ , Amy would still have _less_ than no idea what the _fuck_ to do with _that_.

Liam Booker is human. And likes pancakes.

Who knew?

Amy wonders, briefly if _this_ is how Karma felt. If 'No, Karma. You were.' wrenched up the same feelings in her that hearing Liam say 'they're _so_ fluffy, but the insides are always a bit cold and that just kills it for me, you know? I need warm insides' does to her.

So, basically, 'I'm gay' versus 'warm insides'.

Yeah… not _quite_ the same thing but it's three in the morning and it's been the night from hell so it's close e-fucking-nough.

Amy watches Liam from across the booth and she's vaguely aware that he's, you know, _still_ talking and that he's talking _to_ _her_ , cause she can see his lips moving and she can see his fingers pointing - two of them, one on each hand and they're not so much pointing as they are _jabbing_ , damn near _stabbing_ the menu - and she _thinks_ he's talking about her options (for dining) and giving her the lowdown on what's good and what isn't, but _that_ doesn't matter cause yes, she _sees_ but no, she doesn't _hear_ cause she's too far inside her own head, too caught up in what is, to her, the most shocking discovery since… well… since that _other_ thing she's so _not_ thinking about.

Liam Booker likes pancakes.

And yes, even at three in the morning, Amy knows it's _so_ not about the pancakes, not _really_. It's about him being… sort of… human and them having something (other than… _her_ ) in common and every time, every _single_ time that Amy thinks she's reached the absolute bottom of the well of 'what the _fuck_ ' in her life, she finds that it goes just a little bit deeper.

Liam pauses, for a moment, for a _breath_ , and Amy speaks because… well… _because_.

"You like pancakes."

It's not a question, more of an observation, though - in her _head_ \- she doesn't _just_ say 'you like pancakes' but more 'you like pancakes and that makes you human but you're fucking my girlfriend who really isn't my girlfriend but that's not the point cause you don't know that and so you're helping her to cheat on me and I know you only picked me up out of guilt and you're only talking about pancakes to avoid talking about _her_ you little fuckboy.'

"You like pancakes," she repeats.

"Yeah," Liam says. "I like pancakes. I've always liked pancakes." He pauses, _again_ , and Amy thinks that this is the moment, that here it fucking comes, the line, the words, the _moment_ (she said that _already_ ) when he says something that's laced with meaning, that's a double… no… a _triple_ entendre… when he somehow confesses to what he's been doing behind her back (and, sometimes, right in front of it) and she can go back to hating the _fuck_ out of him.

"I hate waffles, though," he says.

Wait… _what_? "Waffles?"

(Karma's a pancake and _she's_ a waffle and now he's gonna talk about syrup and _then_ she can hate him again.)

"Yeah," Liam says. "I know everyone says they're the same thing, basically, but they're really _not_ , you know? I mean, waffles are more like… english muffins, only… bigger. And with fewer crannies and more nooks and I _know_ it's kinda weird but, really, I'm a total cranny guy. The nooks are just like… _dents_. And no one wants dents for breakfast, you know?"

It terrifies Amy - like even worse than clowns and worse than spiders and worse than spidery clowns (and why did she have to think about _that_?) - but she _does_ know. She knows that absolutely none of what he just said had more than one meaning (or even _just_ the one) and, in fact, everything Liam said made _perfect_ sense - except for, possibly, the actual hating of the waffles because who _hates_ waffles, a little dislike or preferring something else, maybe, but _hate_ is a bit much - and _that's_ it, _that's_ her sign.

She's dreaming.

She fell down on that curb and she sat there alone in the dark and she fell asleep and now she's dreaming. Any second now, Karma's gonna come storming in with fire in her eyes and accuse them of some sort of secret affair (even dream Karma is a little… oblivious… at least to _irony_ ) and she'll probably blame the whole thing on Amy and tell everyone that she's some kind of sex addict and Amy will be shunned (by her like two friends) and have to move away and join a nunnery (do they still have nunneries?) and so what she really needs to do right now is _wake up._

So she pinches herself. Hard. And yelps "OW!" and draws stares from the four other people sitting around the diner and a confused 'are you OK?' from Liam. But the pinch does nothing and she doesn't wake up (cause he's still here) and so Amy plucks her fork from atop her napkin and she gets the tines about an inch above her hand before Liam catches her wrist and holds it steady.

His grip is tight and it's strong, but not so much that it hurts, and Amy notices how delicate his fingers are. Delicate but strong and… nope… not a dream. Nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.

Liam slips the fork from her hand and drops it next to her own and then, before Amy can say or do anything, he does the same with her knife, but her does leave her the _spoon_ , at least for the moment, but then he thinks on it and takes that too and Amy has to wonder if she should guard her straw.

"This is weird, isn't it?" he asks. Amy doesn't look at him - eyes on the straw, just in case - and he takes _that_ as her silent agreement, which it kinda is. "We've never really… talked… before, except for like, that one time in ninth grade." She looks at him, blankly. "We kinda bumped into each other in the hall and I said 'hi' and you said ''sup' and then we both kept walking."

Amy stares at her straw and says even more nothing but, no matter how hard she wracks her brain, she can't remember _that_.

"I guess we just never really ran in the same circles before," Liam says. His hands are resting on the table in front of him, spread out over the menu and blocking her cutlery. "Not until Shane's party, at least."

 _That_ , Amy remembers. No matter how hard she tries not to.

The waitress arrives, cutting off Liam's trip down memory lane before it can really get rolling and she starts with Amy and that's when Amy realizes she hasn't even looked at the menu, other than seeing it poking out from under Liam's delicate, but also slightly violent, jabbing fingers.

"Um… pancakes?" she says ( _asks_ ) (like for _permission_ ) and the waitress blinks and Amy stares and Liam clears his throat and they both turn to him.

"It's just nuts, right?" he asks. "That you're allergic to?" Amy nods and Liam turns to the waitress. "We'll both have my usual," he says. "But could we do extra strawberries on mine and double blueberries on hers and can you just bring the whole can of whip cream?"

The waitress nods and gives Amy one more… _really?_... look and then disappears to fetch their two 'usuals' and Amy stares down at the table but it's eating at her and she has to know.

"How'd you know?" she asks, without looking up. "About my allergy? And that I like blueberries better than strawberries?"

Liam's quiet for a moment, the quietest he's been since he picked her up and it's almost like he's afraid to speak and then he does and Amy understands _why_. "Karma," he says. "She… um… talks about you. A lot. Like… _a lot_."

 _This_ , Amy realizes, is why she _didn't_ die in Karma's room. Because _that_ wasn't bad enough, it wasn't _embarrassing_ and _humiliating_ and _heartbreaking_ enough of a moment, not when _this_ moment was still out there, just waiting for her.

"We were eating lunch," Liam says. "We were in the quad and I offered her a bite of my PB&J and she told me about your allergy." His fingers fidget on the table, shifting the menu back and forth. "But she said you'd probably risk it if it was blueberry jam because, and I quote, 'Amy would _kill_ a man for blueberries."

Amy nods but doesn't speak. She's not entirely sure she can.

"Sometimes, she talks about you so much," LIam says, "I think I know more about you than I do about her." Amy's eyes drift up from the table and Liam runs a hand across his face. "And that probably sounded both creepy _and_ stupid and I should probably stop talking."

"But you're not going to, are you?"

He shakes his head and there's a hint of a smile and Amy has to admit, he's kinda cute when he does _that,_ when he _really_ smiles and not that fake plastered on bullshit thing he does in school or at parties and yes, she realizes she just thought of Liam Booker as _cute_.

But _come on_. He likes pancakes. He can't be _all_ bad.

"No," he says. "Probably not. I tend to ramble when I get nervous." He snorts a little laugh and smiles that smile again. "The first couple times Karma and I hung out, we just kept rambling and babbling over each other. You know, in between her thinking she might puke."

Amy stands corrected. All bad. _All_ so so _so_ bad.

Liam hangs his head and mutters something under his breath that Amy can't hear. His hands fidget faster, almost like he's rubbing the menu against the table, trying to start a fire.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry that I keep mentioning her and I'm sorry I keep talking about her and me like there _is_ a her and me and not just _a_ her and _a_ me which, for the record, there _isn't_ , and I'm sorry…" He runs a hand through his perfect even at three in the a of fucking m hair and huffs out a sigh. "I'm just sorry. Period."

There's a part of her, a small one, that wants to tell him it's OK. After all, he did save her from the side of the road _and_ he's buying her pancakes with blueberries and whipped cream and really, if that doesn't earn someone at least a little forgiveness, what will?

There _is_ that part. But it's a small one and easy enough to ignore and so she does.

"You come here a lot?" Amy asks, giving herself an inner high-five for changing the subject so deftly, even if it does sound like a really bad pick-up line.

Liam looks over at her and there's a second when she thinks he's not going to go go with it, that he's not going to play along and he;s going to keep pushing the 'sorry' issue. But then, as he's done for most of the last half hour, he surprises her.

"That depends," he says. "Is two or three times a week a lot?" Amy nods. "Yeah, well, than I guess the six or seven I'm actually here probably qualifies too."

He smiles and they can both feel the tension easing back, just a bit. It's still there cause it's _them_ , but it's enough to make it so they can both breathe again and that's good enough.

"I don't really sleep well," Liam says. "And it's either come here and partake of the pancakey goodness or…"

"Wander the streets aimlessly until you find yourself sitting on a curb at three am?"

Liam laughs and the sound is as genuine and as real as the smile and _God_ , why does he have to make it so hard to _hate_ him? "Yeah, something like that," he says. "Sometimes, I end up at Shane's but most of the time he's either out with some guy or… _in_ … with some guy." He eyes Amy across the table. "Or, lately, he's been with _you_."

There's a flicker there, in his eyes, and a twinge of… _something_ … in his voice, something like anger (though not quite) or resentment (but not that harsh) but as quickly as she sees it, it fizzles out and he's just… him… again.

"That's cool though," he says. "I'm glad Shane's branching out, really. He doesn't have a lot of, you know, _real_ friends. It's mostly just me and then all the people who love him for the parties and all the girls who love him for being fabulous and all the guys who love him for…"

Liam trails off and they stare at each other for a moment and then they both laugh cause they both know _damn_ well what the _guys_ love Shane for.

"He really likes you," Liam says and this time there's nothing, not even the tiniest flicker or the smallest twinge or _hint_ of anything in his voice. "And I can tell you, it's been a long time since Shane's really liked anyone.

Amy feels the rush of blood to her face and she nods, taking a sip of her water, teeth nipping down on the straw. "He's a good friend and he's… helped… a lot," she says and then scrambles to explain. "I'm sure it seems like I've _totally_ got this gay teenager thing down cold but… sometimes it isn't as easy as it looks."

Liam nod as the waitress arrives, lowering two towering plates of that pancakey goodness down in front of them and Amy has a moment - a _good_ one for a change - where the smell of blueberries and whip cream and fluffy fluff fluff and the thought of Shane, her _friend_ , and even the simple kindness of someone she thought was a total tool all swirls together and even the hell that is this night seems (maybe) survivable, at the very least.

"Yeah," Liam says, handing her back her fork and their fingers brush and he doesn't look away as he speaks. "I'm sure being gay and dating a straight girl can be a little tricky."

Amy clutches the fork and watches as he digs into his pancakes and she looks down at her own and for the first time in her life?

She's not hungry at all.


	13. Knowing

_**A/N: Sorry this took so long. School's kicking my ass. Lemme know if you're still out there, somewhere...**_

Amy doesn't know what to say.

It's not _just_ the say part that's the trouble, either. She doesn't know what to say ('but but but but' is just about the only thing to come to mind) but she _also_ doesn't know what to _think_ (though there is 'but but but but' _again_ ) and she's got not _clue_ what to _feel_ and even if there's no 'but' for that there _is_ a whole lot of everything else.

A bit of panic. A helping of fear. A splash of terror, a dash (oh, _more_ than a _dash_ ) of anger, a metric fuckload of regret and a thin (really, it's _thick_ ) (like Kardashian _thick_ ) (thick like Kylie's lips added to Kim's ass added to all the 'why do I care about _them_ at _all_ ' self loathing Amy feels every time she reads another article about Khloe's newest diet but she just can't _stop_ ) layer of _oh shit oh shit oh fucking shit_ on top of it all.

As in _oh shit_ , what did he _say_? As in _oh shit_ , what does _she_ say? As in _oh fucking shit_ he knows. Liam _knows_.

He knows and Karma knows and now _Amy_ knows that they both know (and they know that she knows that they know and, really, Amy's getting just a bit sick of all this fucking _knowing_ , all about _her_ ) and even if she can't count the number of ways Liam knowing is wrong - though it's triple digits, _at least_ \- just the thought is still enough to make her sick, enough to render her speechless and frozen. She can't speak, she can't move, she can't think.

She can't _eat_.

And _that's_ when you know it's _bad_.

Liam, though, doesn't seem to have that _particular_ problem. He eats. Capital 'E' e _ats_. Eats with a speed and a power that, if she's being honest, makes Amy a little watches him shovel down a bite, _another_ bite, like his fourth, his fourth that's like the size of _five_ of hers and oh, he's gotta be on something, the juice, the roids, the _something_ , some kind of drug that makes Amy wanna make him pee in a Goddamn cup cause no one who eats like _that_ , looks like _that_ \- his abs, they must be _lies_ \- and Amy can't help it, she can't help finding herself wondering if Karma knows, if she understands just how _fake_ he is.

And yes, Amy sees the irony there (she's _biased_ , not _blind_ ) and no, she doesn't _care_ , cause Karma is _Karma_ and Liam? He's nothing, nothing _more_ than a destroyer (of _hearts)_ , and a wrecker (of _relationships)_ , and a ruiner (of the self esteem of vulnerable girls _everywhere_.)

And, apparently, a slayer (of pancakes.)

Who knew?

Oh… wait… that's _right_. _Liam_ knew.

Not that _he_ seems to understand _that_ , not that he's acting like it, at least. But he doesn't hear the questions running through her mind. Will he tell? Why hasn't he told already? _Oooh… maybe_ he has? Maybe, she thinks, it's not just Karma and it's not just him, maybe it's everyone, maybe it's the entire school doing all the knowing. And maybe they're all in on it, maybe it's a plot (or a plan, not a _Karma_ plan, but like an actual _good_ one) and maybe they're just waiting for the right moment to punish them, to excoriate them for their _lies_ , waiting for that time when they'll never see it coming.

That's it, that _has_ to be it. She and Karma are going to end up like Carrie (like in, you know, _Carrie_ ) with blood spilling down over them and every eye staring and every voice laughing and every finger pointing ('Lesbians? Ha! I say Ha!') except neither of them _is_ Carrie so there'll be no killing anyone with their minds (you know, that thing Amy's _losing_ by the _second_ ) but they'll still have fists so, at least, she'll punch Liam - right in those lying abs - and she and Karma will have to go on the run and it's _her_ and _Karma_ , so they'll most likely just end up driving off a cliff (there's one in Austin, _somewhere_ ) in freeze frame and yes, she knows that's _Thelma and Louise_ and yes, she knows she's totally mixing her female revenge flicks but but but but…

But he _knows_.

So, OK, she's panicking. She's freaking. She's one step from calling Lauren _and_ Shane - hell, she's _two_ steps (much _bigger_ steps, but still _steps_ ) from calling _Farrah_ \- and Liam is just… he's just… he's just _so…._

Eating.

(That _fucker_.)

But that's not right, cause it's not _just_ eating, not the way he's doing it, not how he's working his way through his stack like a cheetah finishing off a gazelle and he just keeps _smiling_ \- at her, at the waitress, at every fucking forkful - and nodding down at her plate , like he's all 'go on girl, get you _some_.'

Liam's _acting_. He's acting like they do this all the time, like they eat and they chat and they hang out _on the regular_. He's _acting_ like the didn't just drop a nuke of a B-T-Dubs bomb right on top of her - as if her life wasn't _already_ a bombed out fucking crater - and he's _acting_ like there's nothing that's a bigger deal than the massive stack of strawberry covered fluffiness he's chowing his way through.

 _I'm sure being gay and dating a straight girl can be tricky. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll leave you to your freakout cause mmmmmm… pancakes._

It comes, as everything has seemed to tonight, in a blurt. One Amy doesn't plan (cause that's _Karma's_ job) and one she regrets the moment it's out (cause that's _her_ job) and one that leaves her wondering what the _fuck_ she was thinking (she wasn't) cause the _last_ thing she needs is _more_ lies but Amy still finds herself saying "I don't know _what_ you're talking about," and then staring at Liam like she's challenging him, daring him, like she's all go ahead, _fucker_ , say some _more_.

Liam pauses - mostly out of confusion cause he _was_ talking about something but that was like _five minutes_ ago and he's kinda forgotten it cause, you know, _pancakes_ \- freezing in mid-bite, a hunk of strawberry toppling from his fork and splatting onto the table in front of him. Specks of berry juice - red like _blood_ and now Amy's thinking of Carrie _again_ \- ricochet off the table and dot their way across his shirt.

That's gonna stain, Amy thinks, unless he gets some warm water on it, like _right now_ (and who says Lauren and Farrah have taught her _nothing_?) Maybe, she wonders, if she offers to go and rinse it for him, maybe he'll just pull the shirt off right here at the table - like Liam's ever been ashamed of doing that, like he doesn't act like showing off his shit is his _job_ , like he's paid by the lying ab - and she's sure the waitress would like it _and_ it would give her an excuse, a reason to stand, a reason to make like she's headed off to the restroom and she totally _would_ be.

If, by restroom, you mean parking lot. And if, by parking lot, you mean bus stop. And if, by bus stop you mean the first fucking Greyhound to _anywhere_ , just so long as anywhere isn't here, and isn't anywhere where she has to admit that yes, she does in fact know _exactly_ what he's talking about, even if she says - again - that she doesn't.

"I don't," Amy repeats - in case he didn't hear her the first time and maybe he just stopped eating cause he spotted a bruise on his berry or something (and that couldn't have sounded any dirtier if she _tried_ ) - and no, repeating herself _doesn't_ make it weird. Not at all. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says (again) (and OK, _now_ it's weird), "or what it is you think you know, but Karma is as gay as I am."

If only.

Liam still doesn't say anything, but he does set his fork down (so no more berry bombs) and swipes his napkin across the table, scooting the fragmented bits of dropped fruit into his empty hands before depositing them neatly next to his plate.

Never let it be said he doesn't have _manners_.

" _We're_ gay," Amy says, unable to wait even thirty seconds for him to say something, _anything_ , and so she rushes to fill the silence. "Maybe you _wish_ we weren't, but we are. Both of us. Like one hundred percent, completely, all in with the gay." She watches as Liam leans back in his seat, fingers resting lightly on the tabletop just behind his plate. "There's 'no homo' and then there's _us_ ," Amy says. " _Yes,_ homo. _All_ the homo."

Liam arches an eyebrow - and _fuck all_ , is there _any_ part of him that isn't fucking _sculpted_ and, wait, _no_ , Amy doesn't really _want_ to know _that_ \- and she knows she's pushing her luck (like right off that somewhere in Austin cliff) and she knows she's babbling and rambling and digging a hole plenty deep for her to jump right on in and probably land somewhere near the Earth's _core_ , but she's gone too far to just… _quit_.

"It's a big thing," she says, "among… our people If you say you're gay then, you know, you _be_ gay. Like… all the way gay." Liam's biting his lip - he's trying to stifle a laugh, that _fucker_ \- and Amy has to admit that, if it was anyone else, if _she_ was anyone else and _she_ was on the other side and _she_ was the one with all the knowing and the lying (abs) and the nearly devoured stack of pancakey goodness… she might be laughing too.

But she's not.

She is, however, making it _worse_.

"There's no half assing the gay," she says (why) (just… _why_ ) and _that's_ it, _that's_ the one step too far, _that's_ the straw for that poor camel (or, you know, _unicorn_ ) (cause _all the way gay_ and all.)

It starts like a cough and, to his credit, Liam tries to cover, he _really_ does. He brings a hand to his mouth and he _acts_ like he's taking a sip of water and he waves off the waitress who looks ready, willing (so so _so_ willing) and able to Heimlich the _fuck_ out of him. He tries to shove it back down - the laugh, the chuckle, the _guffaw_ \- but it's too much, it's like the Death Star of fucking laughs and his eyes are watering and his cheeks are flush and he looks like he's about to pass out it's all too much and Amy just can't take it anymore.

She can't lie anymore and she can't pretend anymore and, really, if she's not doing those with _Karma_ anymore? Why the _fuck_ would she do them with _him_?

"You can go ahead," Amy says, stabbing her fork into her pancakes, spearing a few of the berries right in their blue blue hearts. " _You_ can laugh, _you_ can think 'oh, how funny', _you_ can go right the fuck ahead and laugh at _me_." She pushes the plate away and folds her hands in front of her and, really, she wants nothing more in this world (not even Karma) than to run and the only thing that holds her there is that her _need_ to not give _him_ the satisfaction is the one thing more powerful than her _want_. "Besides," she says, "it's not like you haven't been doing _that_ for _weeks_ now, right?"

Liam coughs into his hand, trying to clear his throat, the last bits of his laughter fading against his knuckles. "What?"

"You heard me," Amy says. She stares at the stack of pancakes, blue blood dripping down, streaking its way through mounds of white cream - so now she's thinking of Carrie and _smurfs_ and _fuck all_ this night needs to _end_ \- and she crosses her arms over her chest.

"I did," Liam says, one hand reaching out, tentatively, like he's trying to be comforting cause he _knows_ something's wrong (he _knows_ , _that's_ what's wrong) but he hesitates, his fingers dangerously close to her side of the table, to _her_. "But I don't understand," he says, "cause no one's laughing… well… no one _was_ , not for _weeks_ , and not even tonight, but then you said 'all the homo' and…"

He snorts back another chuckle and Amy fidgets in her seat, squirming back, putting as much distance between them as the tiny diner booth allows.

"Bullshit," she says - _snaps,_ really, but there's so little venom behind it cause she's just too tired for _that_ \- and she shakes her head again, as if saying 'no' over and over and _over_ will make it not be real, make it not _true_. "You know," she says. "And if you know… well… there's only one way you _could_. Well, _obviously_ , there's _two_ , but since _I_ didn't tell you…"

That only leaves one.

(Technically, _two_ \- cause Shane - or, really, _three_ \- cause Lauren - but Amy's not thinking of either of _them_ and she's _really_ not thinking of either of them _and_ Liam.)

She can see the pieces falling into place for Liam, the color draining from his cheeks as they do.

"You think Karma told me," he says, pushing his own plate away and muttering at himself under his breath. "You think she told me and that all this time, we've been laugh... " His eyes go wide as the full depth of it sinks in. "You think… her… me… that she and I… _fuck_."

And then _he_ sees _her_ eyes go wide and Liam realizes what he said - what it _sounded_ like he said - and she's suddenly shuffling toward the edge of her seat, like she's gonna run.

Cause she _is_.

"Wait," Liam says, reaching out. "Amy, please, _wait_." This time, his hand _doesn't_ hesitate and she's not quite quick enough to evade, and he catches her by the hand and Amy stares down, glaring at the spot where his fingers meet her skin.

Her eyes bore into that hand - that _offending_ hand - like it's burning, as if it's searing into her skin and her eyes dart across the table, finding that dull dull knife Liam took from her. And maybe it's the lack of sleep or maybe it's the warring floods of fear and pain and relief that have been doing battle inside her since she told Karma or, maybe, a little of Karma and Lauren's penchants for drama have rubbed off, but all Amy can think?

How quickly could she get that knife? How easy would it be to just cut that hand away, to slice it clean off, to make sure there is _none_ of _her_ that has ever been touched by _any_ of him.

He's touched _enough_.

"It's not like _that_ ," Liam says and Amy can't help wondering how many girls he's said _that_ too but, still - God help her - hearing those words, hearing that maybe it really _isn't_ like _that_ , it's like the sun peeks out from behind a cloud, one tiny smidgen of a beam brushing down across their table. Not quite warm and now quite bright, but maybe…

"It isn't?"

Liam shakes his head - almost frantically - but he doesn't let go of her. "Karma didn't tell me," he says. "And we haven't been…" Amy tenses in his grip and he realizes what she's hoping to hear. "Laughing," he says, wincing as she visibly deflates. "We haven't been laughing at you and we haven't been… she and I…" He does let her go then, dropping her hand and sinking back into his seat. "We're not _together_ ," he says, "not like _that_."

He rubs his fingertips against his eyes and for a moment - just a tiny one - Liam _looks_ almost like Amy _feels_. And she might almost feel bad for him. Except for that… _that_.

"Not like _that_ ," she says and yes, she knows what 'that' means here and yes, it should make her feel better that they're not… thatting… but… "So you're not together like _that_ ," she says, "but you are… together."

Liam pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers and sighs. "I was hoping I was wrong, you know," he says. "I was _praying_ and I'm almost an Atheist."

"Wrong about what?" Amy asks. She's still half out of her seat and she doesn't think she'll be any more in it any time soon. "What were you praying about?"

"This is why Shane doesn't like to let me out on my own," he says, laughing, but in that way that makes it _so_ clear he's not really joking. "It never ends well."

Amy gets _that_ but _that_ is so not an answer. "Liam?"

"I was there," he says. "In the gym, when you kissed her in front of everyone." Amy nods but _that's_ not news. Everyone was there. "And after… when the confetti fell and the crowd cheered and Shane was doing his whole proud gay papa bit...everyone watched _her_."

Well _of course_ they did. Amy's been watching Karma for years. She understands the attraction.

"She was so excited," Liam says and he's staring at the table and doesn't look up, so he doesn't catch them, the thousand and one emotions that play their way over Amy's face when he says 'excited'. There's the hope - that fragile fucking betrayer - that lights her eyes at the thought of Karma enjoying it, their kiss. And then there's the stab of pain, that dull fucking knife jabbing her between the ribs when he says "She was so caught up in the crowd cheering for her" and Amy realizes - _remembers_ \- that bleeds right into that sharp shot of agony when he finishes off with "and I knew, right then, she was faking it. For them, for her… public… for popularity."

It isn't like she didn't know any of that. It isn't like she wasn't _there_.

But it _is_ like an almost (not really) (but kinda) healed wound getting ripped back open and Amy sags back against the seat, refusing to cry.

"They were all watching her," he says. "But I was watching you."

Amy looks up at him, confusion all over her face, and not _just_ because who the _hell_ would watch _her_ when Karma was there. "Why?"

Liam shrugs and he doesn't answer her right away and Amy thinks maybe, just maybe, she knows why, even if it makes no sense, even if it's the most insane and ridiculous and there's just _no fucking way_ reason she could ever imagine.

None of which makes it _wrong_.

"You wanted me to be faking it too, didn't you?" she asks him and the way he _doesn't_ look at her, the way he _won't_ meet her eyes, the way he _can't_ do anything - not even nod - answers the question.

He wanted her to be faking just like Karma cause he _wanted_ Karma.

"How long?" Amy asks and she doesn't need to spell out the _what_ for him. "Since that day by the bench when we met you and Shane?"

Liam shakes his head. "Since the party," he says. "At Shane's. Karma and I talked and she put me in my place and she was just so…"

So _Karma_.

Amy gets _that_ too.

"I know what Karma thinks we are," he says and Amy's never heard him so quiet. "And I also know what it is that she wants us to be and…" And _he_ wants it too, Amy's never been so sure of anything like, _ever_. "But I won't… I can't… I _haven't_ ," he says. "She's tried and she's tried and she has fucking _tried_ but I won't… we haven't done anything more than kiss and I _know_ that doesn't make it better," he says. "I _know_."

He knows. Which was the whole fucking problem. But now, there's a bigger one.

He knows. But so does _she_.

"You're in love with her." The words nearly burn Amy's tongue, they cause her actual physical pain, but that doesn't make them any less true.

"Maybe," Liam says. "I don't know. I've never…" He lets out a deep breath and plucks her long forgotten spoon from the table, twirling it between his fingers. "I know what everyone thinks of me and they're not… totally wrong. But Karma's different and I _like_ different, I like spending time with it - with _her_ \- and talking with her and listening to her ramble on and on about you and her parents and her dumbass brother and her gam-gam…"

 _Her_ parents. _Her_ brother. _Her_ gam-gam.

It's been so long, Amy's almost forgotten that those are all _hers_ and not _theirs_.

"It doesn't matter," Liam says, setting the spoon down on the table. "Whatever it is I feel, it doesn't matter."

Amy's not sure what it is, what vague unnamable feeling or urge or emotion it is that makes her say it, that makes her look at him with something less than fury and something far from hatred and ask "Why not?"

"Because," Liam says, and for a long moment Amy thinks that's all she's gonna get from him, but then… "because _they_ watched her but I watched _you_ and I _knew_ ," he says. "I knew then what I know now, what I've known all along. Maybe I could love Karma, maybe I _will_ and maybe… I _do_ _want_ to love her," he says. "But what I could and might and want, none of that matters, because _you_ already do. You're in love with Karma and you always have been."

And, again, Amy doesn't know what to say.

But _this_ time, that's OK because Liam _does_. He knows to say 'oh, shit', and to say it just loud enough that his voice carries it to her, just over the sound of breaking glass behind her, the sound of three plates of hot cakes and two glasses of water toppling from a tray, over the sound of their waitress snapping off something about 'you can't just stop right in front of people like that' as she bends to collect the debris and - most importantly - over the sound of her own name, over 'Amy?' whispered in that soft and perfect and just so… _her_ … way.

Karma. She's there.

And she knows.


End file.
